The Paris stock market ended the session with an anecdotal gain of 0.11%, at 7139 points, the day after the Fed announced that it intended to continue raising rates and had no plans to reduce them this year, despite concerns about the health of the banking system.

Unsurprisingly, on Wednesday, the Fed raised its target for the federal funds rate by a quarter point, while declaring that it would consider further rate hikes in view of persistently higher-than-expected inflation.

With regard to the recent turmoil in the financial markets, the Fed acknowledged that the banking turbulence was likely to affect both growth and employment in the United States. The Treasury believes that there is no need at present for further rescue plans for the US banking sector.

The US job market remains very robust: weekly jobless claims in the country fell by 1,000 last week, to 191,000 from 192,000 the previous week, according to the Labor Department.

This score remains very close to the lowest historical levels seen in the last 50 years.
The number of people receiving regular benefits edged up by 14,000 to 1,694,000 in the week to March 11, the latest week available for this statistic.

The surprise of the day came from new home sales (+1.1%), which continued their upward trend in the US in February, despite rising house prices and rising mortgage rates.

The Commerce Department reports that sales reached an annualized rate of 640,000 units last month, marking a third consecutive increase.
But this upturn must be put into perspective, as year-on-year sales were down 19%.

New home sales in the South, which alone account for more than half of all transactions, rose by 3% last month, while they jumped by 8.1% in the West.

The median price of new homes rose further to $438,200, compared with $426,500 in January and $427,400 in February 2022.

Across the Channel, the Bank of England has just raised its key rate by 25 pts to 4.25% and is optimistic about inflation, estimating that it will slow at a faster pace than its previous estimates.

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) raised its key rate by 50 basis points to 1.50% and reaffirmed that the Swiss banking system remains very solid, despite Credit Suisse's woes.

On the yield side, a clear easing is taking place after the sharp deterioration of the previous day, and yields are falling back close to those tested on Tuesday: our OATs are down 12pts to 2.733%, Bunds are down 12pts to 2.21%, Italian BTPs are down 11pts to 4.06%.

Across the Atlantic, T-Bonds are improving very slightly: -3.5Pts to 3.465%, the yield spread should benefit the Dollar, but this is not the case: the greenback loses a further 0.4%, now trading at around 1.090 against the Euro.

Gold, the safe-haven par excellence, benefited from the Wall Street and dollar downturn in a "flight to quality" movement that took the fine metal up by more than 2.5% to 1994 dollars an ounce, still close to all-time highs.

In news from French companies, Valneva (-1%) announced a net loss of 143.3 million euros in 2022, compared with a loss of 73.4 million the previous year, as well as a negative adjusted EBITDA which rose from 47.1 to 69.2 million year-on-year.

Voltalia (-8.7%) reported net income (Group share) of -7.2 million euros for the past year, compared with -1.3 million in 2021, and stable EBITDA at 137.4 million (-10% at constant exchange rates), penalized by the deconsolidation of power plants sold in November 2021.

Aubay (+3.7%) reports record net income, Group share, of 35.6 million euros for 2022, versus 34.4 million in 2021, and an operating margin down 0.2 points to 10.4%, on sales up 9.1% to 513.5 million.

Lastly, Michelin (-0.6%) announced yesterday that it had received its 6th Manufacturer of the Year award at the Tire Technology Expo 2023 in Hanover (Germany).

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