(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange had great difficulty finding a direction after a busy day in results and before the meetings of the central banks. The CAC 40 closed down 0.16% the day after an already undecided session.

The Paris Stock Exchange does not depart from its cautious bias at the edge of many major events. The CAC 40 ended down slightly by 0.16% at 7415.45 points. Monday, the star index of the Parisian place had closed not far from the balance (-0.07%), digesting a first salvo of corporate publications.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones will try to align a twelfth session in the green, but the task will be less easy. As in Europe, the results season is in full swing on the other side of the Atlantic and the trend set by the index remains dependent on the reception given to these publications. In addition, operators took note of US consumer confidence which rose to a two-year high of 117 points in July. A statistic that comes on the eve of the decision of the US Federal Reserve (Fed).

“A rate hike of 25 basis points (0.25 percentage points) at the July meeting is fully expected. And with the inflation numbers surprisingly trending lower, indicating the process of inflation normalization is continuing, many believe this could be the last hike of the cycle,” comments Stephen Innes of Spi Asset Management.

Market operators are also awaiting monetary policy decisions from the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank (ECB).

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A lowering that goes badly for Elior

Business publications again animated the session on Tuesday and the pace of publication is set to intensify in the coming days. Among the companies that have already successfully passed their oral examination, we can cite Remy Cointreau, which closed up 4.2% after confirming its objectives for the 2023-2024 financial year despite a difficult start to the year.

On the other side of the spectrum, we find Elior (-12.20%) sanctioned after having lowered its profitability target for the current financial year.

Dassault Systèmes returned 5% as its second-quarter results showed slowing growth in the Life Sciences division.

Alstom fell 1.9% after seeing its orders plunge in the first quarter of its 2023-2024 financial year, due to a demanding comparison base.

Edenred (-0.9%) was not convincing either. However, the specialist in payment solutions in the world of work exceeded expectations on its revenues and its gross operating income, also raising its Ebitda forecast for the current financial year. But a hitch on the net result explains the decline of the title on Tuesday.

Excluding publications, Thales limited its decline to 0.15% after announcing the acquisition of Imperva, an American cybersecurity champion, for 3.6 billion dollars.

On the other markets, the euro lost 0.14% against the dollar at 1.1048 dollars. Oil contracts are taking on color. The September contract on Brent from the North Sea for delivery in September gained 0.8% to 83.16 dollars a barrel while that of the same term on WTI jumped 1.2% to 79.67 dollars a barrel.