(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange is reported in relatively wait-and-see mode on Thursday morning, a certain caution prevailing on the eve of highly anticipated inflation figures on both sides of the Atlantic.

Around 8:15 a.m., the ‘future’ contract on the CAC 40 index – April delivery – advanced 34.5 points to 7235 points, auguring a modest increase at the opening in the wake of the recovery operated by Wall Street the day before.

The Parisian market had ended yesterday’s session with a gain of almost 1.4% to 7186 points, aligning a second day of growth thanks in part to the good performance of the title STMicroelectronics (+6%).

If the CAC has managed to cross its intermediate resistance of 7080 points, it remains for the moment stuck in the middle of its double level of resistance from 7175 to 7250 points, a sign of some hesitation to go higher.

Market participants are waiting to see what direction the latest inflation figures in Europe and the United States will bring, which will help determine the evolution of the monetary policy of the major central banks.

The releases suffered during the bankruptcy of SVB and the difficulties of Credit Suisse give hope for a scenario of ‘resetting the counters’ which could allow the fundamentals to regain the upper hand and the indices to start again from the front.

‘It’s probably a good thing that we are focusing again on this kind of information,’ welcomes this morning Jim Reid, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, in his daily update.

Although the stock markets have been better oriented recently, thanks to the easing of fears about the banks and a series of reassuring indicators, the level of inflation is still worrying investors,

Preliminary inflation figures for Germany, which will be released in the early afternoon, will be closely watched on the eve of the publication of consumer prices in the euro zone.

Those of Spanish inflation are also expected during the morning.

Due to a strong base effect, essentially linked to the ebb in energy prices, the annual rate of inflation could drop between one and two points in March alone.

Investors know that the European Central Bank (ECB) remains very attentive to these figures and weaker than expected data would leave the door open for further rate hikes this year.

Despite its recent deceleration, inflation is not falling as quickly as expected, forcing monetary policy to remain in restrictive territory.

Logically, the Governing Council of the ECB should therefore continue to raise its key rates at its next two meetings, scheduled for May and June.

However, we will have to wait until Friday and the figures for inflation in the euro zone and the PCE in the United States to really see things more clearly.

Until then, the trend could well be favored by the ‘balance sheet dressing’ operations which generally come to animate the end of the quarter.

These last-minute adjustments, which see managers selling underperforming stocks to buy in winning stocks to embellish their portfolios, generally tend to support the market.

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