(News Bulletin 247) – The Parisian index ended slightly lower this Thursday while the market is mainly awaiting the American employment report on Friday. The Bank of Japan also took investors by surprise, suggesting that it could end its negative rates.

Session without much relief for the CAC 40 this Thursday. The Parisian index ended slightly down 0.10% at 7,428.52 points.

Investors showed a wait-and-see attitude before the big meeting of the week, namely the report on non-agricultural employment in the United States for the month of November, which will be published Friday afternoon.

This report will come against a backdrop of market optimism, which is beginning to anticipate future key rate cuts from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve next year.

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Markets too optimistic?

“Stock markets are betting that central banks will quickly have to lower their rates in [un] context of slowdown to avoid a recession… But market expectations on the timetable for the first rate cuts are perhaps a little too aggressive. The markets consider that the first rate cuts could take place as early as March… and that the ECB could make nearly 6 rate cuts of 0.25% in 2024″, underlines Alexandre Baradez, head of market analysis at IG France.

In the meantime, investors took note of the publication of weekly unemployment claims in the United States which amounted to 220,000 compared to 219,000 the previous week. Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expected 222,000.

The news was dominated by Asia. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has been making headlines. Comments “from officials at the Bank of Japan have suddenly led investors to increase the chances that the BoJ will end its negative interest rate policy”, underlines Deutsche Bank. In addition, China’s foreign trade figures are disappointing. Imports contracted in November, by 0.6% year-on-year, while analysts polled by Bloomberg expected an increase of 3.7%.

On the value side, Air France-KLM dropped 3.1%, penalized by a lowering of recommendation from JPMorgan to “underweight”.

Sanofi lost 1.2% at the end of a day dedicated to R&D where the group highlighted its portfolio of drug candidates and their potential markets.

On other markets, the euro gained 0.23% against the dollar to 1.0794 dollars. Oil prices are recovering a little but remain down 13% over one month. The February North Sea Brent contract advanced 0.7% to $74.81 per barrel, while the January contract for New York-listed WTI advanced 0.98% to $70.07 per barrel. .