CAC 40: In balance at the zenith

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The Parisian market reopens this Tuesday after a weekend extended by the Easter holidays (Good Friday, Easter Monday). Thursday the CAC 40 index ended on a note of almost perfect stability close to its peaks (+0.01% to 8,205 points), operators digesting American growth figures higher than expectations.

GDP now reaches an annualized rate of +3.4% for this Q1. Enough to promote “lift”, namely a sustaining force for markets reassured by the vigor of the world’s leading economy. But also enough to favor the “weight”, namely a force which tends to bring it back to the ground, as this figure will give pause to the members of the Fed, who are meeting at the beginning of May. Will the tone also be dovish ?

Operators also took note of revised consumer confidence index (U-Mich) data on Thursday at 79.4, above expectations.

But THE big market event, the publication of the PCE index, the American Federal Reserve’s preferred measure for gauging inflation, took place on Friday afternoon. The Paris market was then closed. Without deviation from expectations, the index of personal consumption expenditures rose 0.3% monthly, excluding food and energy.

On the value side, VusionGroup (formerly SES Imagotag) ended up 11.1% after the group published significantly improved results, released cash, and announced the payment of a dividend. Trigano jumped 10%, the leisure vehicle specialist still recorded strong growth in the second quarter despite a more demanding basis of comparison. Conversely, Soitec plunged 20.6%, returning to the low levels of summer 2020 after warning that its sales would fall sharply in the first half of its 2024-2025 financial year.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the markets were open on Monday and the main equity indices ended the session in scattered order like the Dow Jones (-0.60% to 39,566 points) and the Nasdaq Composite (+0.11% to 16,396 points). The S&P500, the benchmark barometer of risk appetite in the eyes of fund managers, contracted by 0.20% to 4,243 points.

An update on other risky asset classes: around 8:00 a.m. this morning on the foreign exchange market, the single currency was trading at a level close to $1.0730. The barrel of WTI, one of the barometers of the appetite for risk on the financial markets, was trading around $83.70.

On the agenda this Tuesday, to follow the final data of the PMI indicators for the month of March in the Euro Zone at 10:00 a.m. and new job offers (JOLTS) at 4:00 p.m. in the United States.

KEY GRAPHIC ELEMENTS

Thanks to the crossing volumes, the bullish extension since Tuesday and the sectoral federation, we can swing the 8,000 psychological points into support, against which in the long term, a pullback (graphic rejection of confirmation) is not excluded. Now is the time to take a breather from the lessons. The CAC index has traced, in contact with the upper Bollinger band, two candles where the low points, the opening level and the closing level merge. And this before starting a slow decline towards the lower part of an ascending channel (in black) on the daily chart.

FORECAST

Considering the key graphical factors that we have identified, our opinion is neutral on the CAC 40 index in the short term.

We will take care to note that crossing 8220.00 points would revive the buying tension. While a break of 8000.00 points would restart the selling pressure.

Hourly graph

Daily Data Chart