(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange should move without much trend on Monday for the first session of the second half, investors seeming to want to take a break after the good performances recorded in the first part of the year.

Around 8:15 a.m., the futures contract on the CAC 40 index – due at the end of July – advanced by 17.5 points to 7427 points, announcing an extension of the upward movement of last week.

The Parisian market was awarded 1.2% to 7400 points on Friday, a performance that allowed it to claim a weekly gain of nearly 3.5%.

Over the whole of the first half, the CAC posted an increase of around 14.5%.

Driven by better-than-expected economic indicators, the New York Stock Exchange also completed a week of growth on Friday with a new rising session.

Over the past week, the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 both gained 2%, as did the Nasdaq, which thus completed nine out of ten weeks of growth.

Due to the July 4 national holiday falling tomorrow, Wall Street will only reopen for half a session today and will be closed all day Tuesday.

Investors could well take advantage of this holiday period to take a step back and examine where the markets are at, with the question of whether the rebound that began last week is likely to be prolonged.

They will be able to refine, in the coming days, their judgment on the state of the economy according to several statistics which could constitute the next catalyst to go higher, or on the contrary justify a consolidation.

In Europe, the final PMIs for the manufacturing sector will liven up the start of the session today, knowing that their preliminary estimates had disappointed, showing figures at the bottom since the start of the pandemic.

Among the other macroeconomic indicators on the program for the week are the ISM services index in the United States, the latest ‘minutes’ from the Federal Reserve and the US employment report.

All of this data will allow market participants to build scenarios on the timing of interest rate hikes expected from the Federal Reserve, while recent statements by Jerome Powell, its chairman, have reinforced the hypothesis of at least two further rate hikes.

On the bond market, the yield on 10-year US government bonds fell a little towards 3.81% after stretching to almost 3.90% at the end of last week.

The German Bund of the same maturity, the real benchmark rate in the euro zone, fell to a lesser extent around 2.39%.

On the currency side, the dollar continued its recovery against all the other major currencies and the euro lost a few fractions, around 1.0890 dollars.

Both benchmark crude contracts are losing around 0.2%, extending their flat consolidation of recent sessions.

A barrel of Brent is trading at 75.2 dollars, while that of American light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) is trading at 70.4 dollars.

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