After gaining as much as 1.5% in the morning, the Paris Bourse gave up some of its gains during the day to close the session with a more modest 0.44% gain, at 6,623 points, signing nevertheless a 2nd consecutive session of gains for the start of the year after +1.9% the previous day.

Across the Atlantic, Wall Street was down with -0.5% for the Dow Jones, -0.6% for the S&P500 and -0.9% for the Nasdaq.

The first week of trading generally sets the general trend on equity markets, and the first US figures were expected at 4pm: construction spending rose by +0.2% against -0.4% expected.

Investors took note of several key statistics in Europe: the consumer price index for December in Germany was a pleasant surprise, slowing sequentially by -0.8% to +8.6% (vs. +10.00%) thanks to the sharp drop in gas prices.

As an annual average over the whole of 2022, consumer prices in Germany rose by 7.9% in national terms and 8.7% in harmonized terms, compared with the previous year's average.

Investors were also able to take note of a rise in unemployment in Germany in December, according to official statistics published on Tuesday by the Federal Employment Agency.

The number of jobseekers thus rose by 20,000 compared with November to stand at 2,454,000 at the end of last month. This latest figure signals an increase of 124,000 compared with December 2021.

On the energy front, Brent crude fell by -1.8% (to $84) and WTI by -2% (to $78.8) as manufacturing activity in China slowed to 49 from 49.4 according to the PMI released this morning.

On the interest-rate front, US T-Bonds eased by -10pts to 3.731%, our OATs posted the same spread at 2.882%, Bunds -9pts to 2.357% and BTPs -8.5pts to 4.477%

In corporate news, Orpea (-3,8%) announced that it had made two new drawdowns of 205 million euros at the end of December 2022, under the 3.2 billion euro financing agreement signed with its main banking partners last June.

Sensorion announces that it has enrolled the first patient in its Phase 2a proof-of-concept clinical trial of SENS-401 (Arazasetron) in patients suffering from cisplatin-induced ototoxicity.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) announces that on December 30 it completed the sale of two Westfield shopping centers in Trumbull (Connecticut) and Bay Shore (New York) to a commercial real estate investment company.

Finally, the European Commission has approved the acquisition of joint control of Aubert & Duval by Airbus, Safran and Tikehau Ace Capital.

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