The Paris Bourse consolidates at the margin (-0.1 to -0.2%) after briefly peaking at 7,550 points shortly after the opening (new record at 7,552): the index is weighed down by Renault's decline of over 4%, followed by a -3% drop in Cap Gemini and Unibail.

The Euro-Stoxx50 lost nearly -0.5% to 4,370, while Wall Street reopened close to equilibrium (the Dow Jones and S&P500 fluctuated between 0.00% and +0.1%).
The "fact of the day" was the yield on the French 10-year bond, which returned to the 3% mark (+5pts to 2.993%), and that on Bunds, which rose +4pts to 2.4700%.

With the quarterly earnings season now upon us, market players will find out this week whether the rebound of recent weeks has marked the beginning of a genuine upturn, or whether the recent episode of stress linked to the banking crisis has been a warning to be taken seriously.

Up to now, the stock market rebound has been driven by the hope of an imminent pause in the cycle of interest rate hikes by the major central banks, as well as by economic indicators deemed rather encouraging.

These factors reinforced optimism about a possible "soft landing" for growth, which would see inflation fall back sharply, without leading to the economy slipping into recession.


The earnings season should provide an opportunity to test the resilience of stock markets, particularly on Wall Street.

A number of major names, including Bank of America, Netflix, Tesla, J&J, Morgan Stanley and Procter & Gamble, are due to publish their accounts in the next few days.

In Europe, traders will be looking at the quarterly performances of heavyweights such as ASML, SAP and Nokia.

Traders will also have to study the latest PMI indices, due on Friday, to find out more about the reality of the current 'headwinds' and the imminence of a possible recessionary threat.
In the meantime, they have discovered a spectacular rebound in activity (+36Pts) in the New York area manufacturing sector: the local Fed's 'Empire State' index stands at +10.8 for the current month, compared with -24.6 in March.

This improvement, which was much stronger than expected since economists were only anticipating a slowdown in the contraction of activity, enabled the index to move back into positive territory for the first time since last November.
Another pleasant surprise, Charles Schwab - which is facing major deposit withdrawals - reassured the market with $5 billion in "revenues", and gained 0.5%.

In the news from French companies, Forvia (Faurecia) reports a 29% increase in sales to over 6.64 billion euros for the first quarter of 2023, including a significant scope effect linked to an additional month's consolidation of Hella.

TotalEnergies announces the delivery of the first LNG cargo to the Dhamra LNG terminal on India's east coast, owned and operated by ATPL, a 50-50 joint venture between TotalEnergies and Adani.

Renault said this morning that its worldwide sales had reached 354,545 units in the first three months of the year, up 9% on the first quarter of 2022.

Finally, Neoen announced that it had won 49.8 MWp of solar projects in the latest government tenders in France, managed by the CRE.

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