(News Bulletin 247) – The European stock markets are moving without direction this morning, Paris grabs 0.4%, ahead of Frankfurt (stable) and London (-0.4%).

The day before, the European markets had suffered a sharp drop (between -2% and -3%) while bond yields were gaining altitude, in the prospect of a tightening of the monetary policy of the Fed.

For several months, some analysts have been concerned about the ‘cognitive dissonance’ of the markets, which favor the ‘pink’ scenario of an absence of recession and a rapid normalization of inflation.

Investors were overtaken by monetary policy issues yesterday as US labor market data heightened fears of further rate hikes from the Fed.

Additional pressure on equity markets came from the sharp rise in government bond yields, an overly sharp rebound of which has often been the cause of a stock market correction in recent years.

The ten-year American still stands above 4%, at four-month highs, while its German equivalent is hovering around 2.6%, against 2.2% a week ago.

Investors are now waiting to take note of one of the most fundamental indicators for the economy, namely job creations for the month of June in the United States.

Economists are hoping for confirmation of the trend towards a slowdown in the pace of job creation, but the statistics have surprised on the rise after their last 14 monthly publications.

On the statistics front, production in German industry in May 2023 (actual, provisional) is down -0.2% compared to the previous month (seasonally and calendar-adjusted) according to provisional data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and +0.7% compared to the same month of the previous year (adjusted for calendar variations).

In corporate news, the BMW Group delivered a total of 626,726 BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce vehicles to customers in the second quarter, up +11.3% year-on-year, driven by strong sales growth in electric car sales (+117.5% at group level, +150% at BMW brand level).

Shell has released its preliminary operational indicators for the second quarter. The group says it is aiming for production of between 1.65 and 1.75 million barrels per day, down from 1.88 million in the first quarter due to maintenance work carried out on several of its projects.

BAE Systems announces that it has been awarded a $37 million contract from the United States Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium (DOTC) to design the Next Generation SeaSparrow Missile Launch System (NGELS).

Copyright (c) 2023 News Bulletin 247. All rights reserved.