The Paris Bourse is set to open moderately higher on Friday, with investors wary of taking too many risks ahead of the release of the latest eurozone services PMI indices.

At around 8:15 a.m., the 'future' contract on the CAC 40 index - expiring in June - climbed 6.5 points to 7679 points, pointing to a modest advance in the early part of the session.

The main focus of the European session will be the results of the monthly purchasing managers' surveys (PMI) on private sector activity in the eurozone economies.

Investors will be watching to see whether these figures confirm the moderate but
real recovery in the monetary union suggested by several recent indicators.

This cautious recovery is one of the factors that enabled European markets
to enjoy a good start to the year, until the shock of the European elections two weeks ago.

However, the consequences of the political uncertainty linked to the dissolution have been felt less since the start of the week, and the CAC closed yesterday's session with a gain of 1.3% at 7671 points.

Some traders attribute this upward movement to the success of the latest French debt auction, which saw strong demand despite the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the forthcoming legislative elections.

For the week as a whole, the leading index is currently up 2.2%, after having fallen by more than 6% last week.

Also to be followed this afternoon, the US PMI, which should show, according to consensus, that the economy remains firmly anchored in growth territory.

Wall Street ended yesterday in disarray, with the Dow Jones (+0.8%) benefiting from a sector rotation that penalized Nasdaq technology stocks (-0.8%).

The bullish mechanism came to a halt when Nvidia, the world's largest capitalization, wiped out its initial 3.5% gain to tip into the red and finish 3.5% down.

With a market capitalization of 3,218 billion, the chipmaker relinquished first place to Microsoft (3,312 billion), but remained ahead of Apple (3,215 billion).

US bond yields eased back after their sharp decline the previous day. Ten-year Treasuries are back to around 4.25% this morning, compared with 4.27% yesterday evening.

The yield on the ten-year German Bund, the benchmark for the eurozone, is virtually unchanged at 2.43%.

The euro is making a timid recovery to around 1.0720 against the dollar, which had benefited yesterday from the tensions on US bonds.

Crude oil prices are trending upwards following yesterday's announcement of a slight weekly decline in US crude oil inventories.

A barrel of US light crude (West Texas Intermediate, WTI) is up 0.7% at $82.2, while Brent is broadly stable at $85.7.

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