The Paris stock market ended the session with a 0.8% gain, at 6924 points, driven in particular by luxury goods stocks such as Kering (+3.2%) and LVMH (+2.3%).

For its part, the Euro-Stoxx50 gained almost 1% and, across the Atlantic, Wall Street was also on the rise, with +0.2% for the Dow Jones, +0.5% for the S&P500 and +0.8% for the Nasdaq.

Tomorrow, investors will be watching with interest the latest US inflation figures. Economists are hoping for a further slowdown (towards 6.5 or 6.6%), after 7.1% in November.

Another date to watch: the big banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citi and Wells Fargo kick off the quarterly earnings season on Friday.

Earnings of companies listed on the S&P 500 index are expected to fall by 4.1% in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to FactSet estimates, and pleasant surprises could once again be a bullish factor.

There were few figures on today's agenda on Wednesday: data published by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) showed that crude oil inventories stood at 439.6 million barrels in the week to January 2 in the USA, up 19 million barrels on the previous week.

Inventories of distillates - including heating oil - were down (-1.1 million barrels), while gasoline stocks were up by 4.1 million barrels on the previous week.

Lastly, the EIA reports that refineries operated at 84.1% of their operational capacity during the same week, with average production of 8.5 million barrels/day.

Brent crude oil rose by 2.8%, approaching $82 a barrel, while WTI crude oil made similar progress, nearing $77 a barrel.

And the bond markets remain unmoved, with yields suddenly easing by -12pts on our OATs to 2.6780% and -11pts on Bunds to 2.19%, followed by -17pts on Italian BTPs to 4.04%.
The improvement is a little more timid on US T-Bonds at 4.575% (-4.5Pts).

In company news, LVMH announces the appointment of Pietro Beccari, who has headed Christian Dior Couture since 2018, as CEO of Louis Vuitton, succeeding Michael Burke who will take up a new position reporting directly to the luxury group's CEO, Bernard Arnault.

Dassault Aviation announced yesterday that its Mérignac plant had delivered the F3R-standard Rafale B359 to the Direction Générale de l'Armement on December 29, 2022. This event marks the resumption of Rafale deliveries to France after a four-year interruption for budgetary reasons", says Dassault.

Airbus is in preliminary negotiations with Atos (+6.2%) to acquire a stake of up to 29.9% in Evidian, according to Les Echos. The Orange group is also said to be interested, according to the daily.

Finally, yacht manufacturer Fountaine Pajot reports that its order book, covering both the 2022-23 financial year and a large part of the years to follow, enables it to forecast growth for 2022-23 of between +10% and +15%.

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