by Laetitia Volga

PARIS (Reuters) – Wall Street is expected to be in the green and European stock markets rose mid-session on Thursday, benefiting from a renewed appetite for risk after the announcement of a good Chinese indicator.

After ending down and recording a decline for the whole of February, the New York indices should rebound at the start of March. Futures contracts are signaling a gain of 0.2% for the Dow Jones, 0.21% for the Standard & Poor’s-500 and 0.35% for the Nasdaq. In Paris, the CAC 40 gained 0.68% to 7,317.71 around 12:10 GMT. In Frankfurt, the Dax advances by 0.59% and in London, the FTSE by 0.9%.

The pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index is up 0.37%, the Eurozone EuroStoxx 50 is up 0.76% and the Stoxx 600 is up 0.28%. Macroeconomic news out of China on Wednesday pleasantly surprised market participants as the official manufacturing PMI rose to 52.6 in February, a figure that beat expectations and marks its highest since April 2012.

European indices had a solid start to the year, thanks in particular to the end of health restrictions by Beijing, which revived hopes of a recovery in demand.

However, risky assets gradually waned in popularity as investors feared more than expected monetary tightening from major central banks in the face of persistent inflation.

On this point, the figures published in several German Länder remained at the same – high – level as in January. Market operators are now awaiting, at 1:00 p.m. GMT, the first estimate of inflation for the whole of Germany, before that for the euro zone on Thursday. WALL STREET VALUES TO FOLLOW

VALUES IN EUROPE

The European commodity compartment posted the strongest sectoral progress of the day with a gain of 3.14%, linked to hopes in China.

“The Chinese data confirms expectations that the growth outlook has improved quite significantly, which is therefore positive for risk sentiment,” said Niels Christensen, chief analyst at Nordea.

The Stoxx automobile index (+1.93%) and luxury stocks are also well supported. Moncler (+4.71%) is also supported by the strong growth of its 2022 sales.

Atos gained 8.93% after publishing annual revenue above expectations.

Also down, BNP Paribas loose 2.60%, Belgium, its largest shareholder, having announced the sale of a third of the capital held. The Allfunds fund distribution platform fell by 13.72% following the withdrawal by Euronext (+5.64%) of its indicative purchase offer.

CHANGES

On the foreign exchange market, the yuan is trending higher against the dollar after the statistics published in China. And the euro, at $1.0667, is also rising sharply, with regional price data in Germany fueling fears over inflation and the ECB’s monetary policy.

The “dollar index”, which measures the variations of the greenback against a basket of currencies, is thus logically down, by 0.57%.

RATE

The yield on ten-year US Treasuries was almost stable at 3.9299%.

In the euro zone, benchmark bond yields are on the rise, at 2.682% for the ten-year German bond and 3.154% for the OAT of the same maturity.

OIL

Oil prices are falling in reaction to the announcement by the American Petroleum Institute (API) of an increase in crude inventories in the United States.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) is due to release its own inventory figures at 15:30 GMT.

Brent fell 0.71% to 82.86 dollars a barrel and US light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) 0.99% to 76.29 dollars.

(Laetitia Volga, editing by Kate Entringer)

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