(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange should open slightly higher on Friday morning after its break for the last two days while waiting for a few important meetings, including the monthly US employment report.

Around 8:15 a.m., the futures contract on the CAC 40 – September delivery – advanced by 14 points to 7342.5 points, suggesting a favorable but insufficient opening to exceed the zone of 7350-7400 points on which the index has been blocked for several sessions. .

Caution prevails before the publication of job creation figures in the United States, which will be the culmination of a week lived at the pace of economic indicators that have not been totally reassuring.

The US Department of Labor will publish employment statistics for August at 2:30 p.m., for which economists predict an average of 168,000 job creations, against 187,000 in July.

Investors will be on the lookout for any sign of a slowdown in the labor market, which would validate the thesis of a ‘soft landing’ for US growth and reinforce the scenario of an imminent end to the cycle of increases. Federal Reserve rate.

“A slowdown in hiring will probably be welcomed by central bankers, but for now, the stubbornness of overall wage growth may be more important,” however tempers Christian Scherrmann, US economist at DWS.

A certain wait-and-see attitude should also prevail before the publication – during the morning – of the PMI manufacturing indices in Europe, which should confirm the sector’s vulnerability.

So far, the message of surveys carried out among purchasing managers in the Old Continent leans more towards a risk of ‘stagflation’, ie an environment in which weak growth and inflation combine.

“The gloom is no longer just confined to Germany and the manufacturing sector, it is spreading to other countries and sectors,” warns Bruno Cavalier, at Oddo BHF.

With growth decelerating on the back of a year of rapid interest rate hikes, investors fear that the European Central Bank (ECB) has already tightened monetary policy too much.

‘It would be welcome if the ECB finally stopped tightening its monetary policy’, judges Bruno Cavalier.

Yields on European government bonds are also down under the combined effect of recent disappointing indicators and the strengthening of expectations of an ECB pause: that of the ten-year German Bund is down to 2.46 %.

Its American equivalent, at 4.09%, is moving to a low of almost a month.

At this stage of the week, the CAC 40 index is currently posting a gain of around 1.2%. Over the month of August, which ended yesterday, it had lost almost 2%.

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