The Paris stock market is perfectly stable with 90 minutes to go, while Wall Street has reopened slightly lower, with uniform scores of around -0.1% for the 3 main USD indices.

It's been a rather cautious start to the week for Wall Street, as Thanksgiving online sales (+5.5%) have shattered expectations.
And it was even more exciting on Friday ('black friday') with a +7% surge in internet sales.
But new catalysts are needed to push up the S&P 500, the benchmark index for fund managers, which is now up nearly 19% this year, with the Nasdaq-100 flirting with +40%.

For the CAC40, too, the end-of-year period is usually a good opportunity to gain ground, but with a rise of almost 13% this year, compared with an average annual gain of 4.6% over the last ten years, the Paris Bourse seems to have already beaten the call.

Against this backdrop, it would be logical to see market enthusiasm wane a little, given that the good news of the moment seems to be fully priced in.

Over the past 20 years, S&P 500 valuations have averaged 15.4x P/E, but this multiple is significantly higher today, with a P/E of 20.4x for the benchmark index of American managers... and 53 for the 'Fantastic 7'.

What's more, growth is slowing more in Europe than in the US, which is why traders 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 drop to 4% in core data, compared with 4.2% in October.

US statistics will also be closely scrutinized, as they will, among other things, testify 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 expected on Thursday, will provide an insight into the consumer's propensity to spend at the end of the year, as retail sales fell in October (but rebounded strongly this weekend).

This release will be accompanied by the core PCE index for
October, which remains the US Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation.

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 +0.6% gain to $2,014: 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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