The Paris Bourse is set to maintain its bullish momentum on Friday morning, with investors apparently determined to continue buying as the quarterly earnings season gets underway.

At around 8:15 a.m., the future contract on the CAC 40 index - expiring at the end of April - was up 19.5 points at 7505 points, pointing to an opening close to, or even above, the psychological 7500-point threshold.

Buoyed by the luxury goods sector and LVMH in particular, the Paris market had yesterday posted its fourth consecutive session of gains, ending the day with a 1.1% gain at 7,480 points, an all-time closing level.

The prospect of an imminent pause in the monetary tightening cycle, both in the USA and Europe, is fuelling investors' appetite for risk and directing them towards the equity markets

Over the week as a whole, shortened by Easter Monday, the CAC 40 has so far posted a weekly gain of around 2%, taking its year-to-date rise to 15.5%.

The markets are now awaiting the start of the corporate earnings season, and any good news that might sustain the upward trajectory underway in recent weeks.

The first real test will come today with the release of earnings from US banking giant JPMorgan Chase, which will unveil its results at midday, along with its peers Wells Fargo and Citi.

According to data from FactSet, the financial companies that make up the S&P 500 should see their earnings climb by 9.1% in the first quarter, the best sector performance of the entire index.

The session also promises to be very lively on the economic front, with figures on retail sales, import prices, industrial production and consumer confidence in the USA.

In Europe, market participants will take note of the latest inflation data from France and Spain.

Investors' current attraction to equity markets is limiting demand for Treasury bonds, as illustrated by the rise in German Bund and French OAT yields.

Across the Atlantic, the yield on 10-year Treasuries is easing to 3.43%.

The dollar continues to suffer from the moderation of inflation in the United States, which makes the prospect of further interest rate hikes more remote, allowing the euro to remain solidly above the 1.10 threshold.

In a climate marked by risk appetite, oil prices continued to climb, with Brent rising 0.2% to $86.3, while US light crude (WTI) gained 0.3% to $82.4.

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