CAC 40: a quiet week, except for Nvidia

(CercleFinance.com) - The Paris Bourse is set to open without much change on Monday, at the start of what promises to be a quiet week, with few major indicators on the agenda.


The CAC 40 future contract - which has now switched to the December timeframe - posted a modest gain of 13 points to 7298.50 around 8.15, heralding a stable or even slightly positive start to the session.

Over the past week, the Paris market had fallen by around 1%, bringing its year-to-date decline to around 1%.

This heaviness affected all European markets, with the Euro STOXX 50 losing 1.2%, for an annual gain now down to around 6%.

Analysts point out that the underperformance of the Old Continent's equity markets is now at historic levels compared with Wall Street, which is chaining record after record.

The themes that continue to preoccupy the markets are now well known: on the one hand, the effect of Trump's election, weak demand from China and disparate corporate comments on the third quarter", Edmond de Rothschild's teams point out.

On this last point, more than half the companies in the STOXX 600 have published their results, and only a few sectors surprised positively on average", the private bank points out.

Barclays' strategists point out that European companies reported an average of 3% growth in earnings per share (EPS) in the third quarter, compared with 7% for their US counterparts.

The 'Trump Trade' - which carried Wall Street in the wake of the November 5 presidential election - nevertheless seems to have run out of steam last week.

After surging by 5% to 6% in the sessions following the election, the major New York indices gave up between 1% and 3% last week, worried about the repercussions of the next US president's policies.

Investors fear that the pro-business approach advocated by the real estate magnate will lead to a resurgence in inflation, which could cause the Fed to slow down its rate cuts.

The economic agenda promises to be light this week, with the main event set for Friday with the publication of the European flash PMI indices.

These data will enable us to gauge the reaction of European companies to Donald Trump's recent victory and their feelings regarding the possible introduction of tariffs likely to penalize their business.

Against this backdrop, all eyes should be on Wednesday evening's results from Nvidia, now the world's largest listed company ahead of Apple.

The AI chipmaker's performance could help revive a technology segment that has been losing momentum of late (-1.6% for the S&P sector index over the past month).

Analysts covering the stock are expecting a publication comparable to its latest announcements, i.e. better-than-expected accounts accompanied by an increase in targets, especially as the semiconductor designer is now starting to benefit from the recent launch of its new architecture, dubbed 'Blackwell'.

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