The Paris stock market is running a little sluggish (-0.2%) with 30Mn to go, while Wall Street continues to decline slightly, with uniform scores of between -0.1% and -0.2% for the 3 main US indices.

It's a rather cautious start to the week for Wall Street, despite the fact that Thanksgiving online sales (+5.5%) shattered expectations.
And it was even more exciting on Friday ('black friday') with a +7% surge in internet sales.

Traders gave a dispassionate welcome to the -5.6% fall in new single-family home sales in the USA (to 679.000 units at an annualized rate) after an 8.6% jump in September.

The Commerce Department also reported that the median house price was $409,300, and the average price $487,000 (an all-time record).
The inventory of new homes for sale now stands at 439.000, i.e. a reserve of around 7.8 months at the current rate of sales.

Overall, growth is slowing more in Europe (Germany in recession, +0.3% expected in 2024) than in the United States, which is why operators may be tempted to underweight Old World equities, despite their more attractive valuations.

Investors will be keeping a close eye on the indicators scheduled for this week, to see whether or not they confirm the scenario of the end of the rate hike cycle that has so far been driving the trend.

Eurozone inflation - due for publication on Thursday - is expected to decline further compared with the previous month: the consensus is for a decline to 4% in core data, compared with 4.2% in October.

U.S. statistics will also be closely scrutinized, as they will testify, among other things, to the state of consumer spending, which remains the main driver of growth on the other side of the Atlantic.

Household spending in the USA, also due on Thursday, will give an insight into consumer propensity to spend as the year draws to a close, while retail sales fell back in October (but rebounded strongly this weekend).

This publication will be accompanied by the core PCE index for
October, which remains the "benchmark" measure of inflation for the US Federal Reserve.

More generally, a new estimate of US growth - due tomorrow - followed by the ISM manufacturing index on Friday, will provide an indication of the economy's continued resilience.

While the stock market indexes posted insignificant gains, gold stood out with a +0.4% gain to $2,010: this could be the mechanical consequence of a clear easing in rates on Monday, with -5 basis points on US T-Bonds (to 4.433%), -8 basis points on our OATs to 3.120% and -8.5 basis points on Bunds to 2.561%.

In news from French companies, Valneva announces that the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has accepted its application for marketing authorization (MA) for its single-dose chikungunya vaccine candidate VLA1553.

Veolia announces that it has signed an agreement for the acquisition by NGE, an independent public works group, of SADE-CGTH, its subsidiary specializing in the construction and rehabilitation of water and infrastructure networks, for an enterprise value of 260 million euros.

Finally, Lhyfe announced on Monday that it had been selected by Nantes and the Port of Saint-Nazaire to develop a green hydrogen production site designed to decarbonize the port ecosystem on a "large-scale" basis.

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