The Paris stock market ended the day's "Four Witches" trading session at breakeven (+0.04%), at 8164 points, with gains by Stellantis (+2.5%) and Alstom (+2.1%) offset by declines by STMicro (-3.4%) and URW (-1.7%) in high volumes, with nearly 8 billion euros traded since the opening.

After peaking at 8212 points in the afternoon, the CAC40 surrendered its profits in the last few minutes of trading.

The index nonetheless gained nearly 1.7% over the past week, and nearly 8.5% since the start of the year.

On the statistics front, US consumer confidence remained broadly stable in March, according to the University of Michigan's preliminary estimate of 76.5, compared with 76.9 the previous month.

Although the index was down 0.5% on February, this variation is within the margin of error.

However, the index is up 23.4% on March 2023, and consumers are still alive and well, as demonstrated by Thursday's solid retail sales figures, accompanied by the strongest annualized rise in producer prices since September.

Meanwhile, the Empire State index reported a sharp contraction in manufacturing activity in New York State in March, plunging 19 points on the previous month to -20.9.

Demand weakened due to a significant drop in new orders and a decline in shipments', explain the surveyors, adding that labor market indicators also weakened.

The pace of input price increases moderated somewhat, while that of selling prices remained stable. Businesses expect conditions to improve over the next six months, although optimism remained subdued.

Finally, US import prices rose by 0.3% in February compared with the previous month (+0.2% excluding petroleum products), while export prices increased by 0.8%, both gross and excluding foodstuffs.

The 12-month picture is more encouraging: import and export prices fell by 0.8% (-0.5% excluding petroleum products) and 1.8% respectively last month (-1% excluding foodstuffs).

Bond markets are coming off the low point of a "complicated" week: yields have eased sharply since Tuesday, and Thursday's session was very negative.
No relief on the horizon this Friday, with T-Bonds deteriorating by a further +2pts to 4.315%, the same gap for our OATs (to 2.885%), followed by Bunds (to 2.44%) and +3pts for Italian BTPs to 3.7030%.

Bitcoin came under a great deal of stress at around 2.30 a.m., plunging 72,000% to $67,300 (the low tested at around 10.00 a.m. this morning) before bouncing back to $68.400... making it just about stable over the past week.

In other stock news, Bolloré published a net income for 2023 of 268 million euros, after 3.4 billion the previous year, for stable sales of nearly 13.7 billion (-5% organic).

Following the announcement made in November, Spie announces the completion of the acquisition of ROBUR Industry Service Group GmbH, the necessary regulatory approvals having been received and all conditions precedent having been lifted.

Elis announces that it has placed a principal amount of 400 million euros in senior unsecured bonds under its EMTN (Euro Medium Term Notes) program, with a maturity of six years and an annual fixed coupon of 3.75%.

Euroapi (-17.5%) has suspended its 2024 outlook, due to the suspension of API production at its Brindisi site in Italy due to quality control failures, a situation that is expected to impact the group's operating and financial performance.



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