(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange is expected to rise slightly on Thursday morning, even if caution should remain in order before two statistics on inflation which could consolidate the recent market rebound or, on the contrary, trigger a new bout of volatility .

Around 8:15 am, the ‘future’ contract – September delivery – on the CAC 40 index nibbles nine points to 7387.5 points, suggesting modest gains at the opening.

Investors await with some feverishness the data on consumer prices for the month of August in the euro zone, which will be published at 11:00 am.

The consensus sees inflation falling back to 5.1% over one year after +5.3% in July: a figure above expectations would add additional uncertainty and cause further market turbulence.

“The big concern at the moment is the growing threat of stagflation in Europe, which would be marked by still persistent inflation and absentee growth,” said Jim Reid, market analyst at Deutsche Bank.

The rest of the session will be animated by the publication, at the beginning of the afternoon in the United States, of household income and expenditure, a statistic which includes the price index ‘PCE’ closely watched by the Federal Reserve.

Again, higher-than-expected numbers could rekindle rate fears and spur a further push in government bond yields, two factors behind recent bouts of equity corrections.

A sign of investor caution, the CAC 40 yesterday ended a series of three consecutive upward sessions by undergoing a slight consolidation of 0.1% to 7364 points.

The Parisian index, however, remains above the pivot threshold of 7360 points, a success which confirms its transition to an upward trend according to graphic analysts.

In New York, US equity markets managed to line up a fourth session in the green following gloomy economic indicators which confirmed the need for a pause in the Fed’s rate hike cycle. .

The yield on ten-year US Treasury bonds thus continued to decline, posting below 4.12%. In Europe, ten-year German Bund yields are trending towards 2.54% pending the latest inflation figures.

On the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the Nikkei index took 0.8% at the end of the session, while the Shanghai SSE Composite and the CSI 300 dropped around 0.6% despite the publication of PMIs deemed rather reassuring.

China’s manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) reached 49.7 in August from 49.3 in July, according to the State Bureau of Statistics (NBS), approaching the 50-point threshold indicating sector growth.

‘Despite everything, the current economic slowdown seems more structural than cyclical,’ worry analysts at Commerzbank.

‘The process of correction of the real estate sector and the debt problems of local authorities will take time to resolve,’ warns the German bank.

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