(News Bulletin 247) – The Paris Stock Exchange saw its lead crumble after an excellent report on American employment. The CAC 40 ended up slightly by 0.05%, and the balance sheet was therefore negative for the week (-0.55%).

The Paris Stock Exchange ends the week without much conviction after an excellent American employment report which further supports the conviction of the American Federal Reserve to dissipate excessive expectations for rate cuts in March.

The CAC 40 saw its initial gains crumble to close with a symbolic increase of 0.05%, below 7,600 points at 7,592.26 points. Over the whole week, the Parisian flagship index therefore showed a negative performance (-0.55%).

The main meeting of the day, the latest employment report kept all its promises, especially since this data is always followed to try to anticipate the Fed’s next move. “The American economy is full of surprises and the latest is the explosive employment report,” says Alexandre Baradez, head of market analysis at IG France

It indeed shows an impressive solidity of the job market across the Atlantic in January, with 353,000 non-agricultural job creations, almost twice what the consensus expected (185,000 job creations). The figure for the previous month was also very significantly revised upwards to 333,000 against an initial publication of 216,000. The unemployment rate is at 3.7%, a little lower than consensus expectations, at 3.8%. .

Above all, wages accelerated in January by 4.5% compared to 4.1% in December, which rekindles for Alexandre Baradez the question of the wage-price loop.

Faced with this major surprise, rate cut expectations (via Fed Funds Futures) for the March meeting fell below 20% while they continued to fluctuate around 50% yesterday, the day after the Fed meeting.

On the bond market, the American 10-year rate rose above 4% again, to 4.04% after today’s statistics.

This impressive resistance of the American job market relegates to second place the excellent results of Meta which soars by 20.8% while Amazon progresses by 7.9% after having published a strong increase in operating margin in the fourth quarter.

In Paris, Vallourec gained 3.10% after announcing that its annual results would be higher than its forecasts.

On other markets, the euro lost 0.8% against the dollar to 1.0785 dollars after the American employment report. Oil is falling again. The April contract on North Sea Brent fell 1.4% to $77.60 per barrel, while the March contract on WTI listed in New York lost 1.8% to $72.53 per barrel. .