Home » Business » Cac 40: Down 18% over 6 months, the Paris Stock Exchange signs one of the worst semesters in its history

Cac 40: Down 18% over 6 months, the Paris Stock Exchange signs one of the worst semesters in its history

(BFM Bourse) – This last session of June ended with a decline of 1.8% and 10% over the month of June for the Paris Bourse. Worse still, the semester ended with a heavy drop of almost 18%. A lackluster score, making this first half of 2022 one of the least flattering in the history of the Parisian marketplace. The indices are bent under fears of a recession while central bankers are working to reduce inflation to its highest level in decades.

For the last session of June and the semester, the Paris Stock Exchange closed down 1.80%. Thanks to a final push, the CAC 40 however limited the breakage and managed to climb from 5,900 points to 5,922.86 points. The star index in Paris had lost nearly 3% around 1:30 p.m., accelerating its losses before the publication of major statistics in the United States, including the highly anticipated inflation figures. With this last session, the drop in the CAC 40 reached 10% in June and 18% since January, one of the worst semesters in the history of the Parisian marketplace.

In the United States, the atmosphere is also heavy, certainly less than in Europe but all the same. Wall Street is also on track to record one of its worst half-years of the year since 1970. The Dow Jones lost 1.1%, as did the S&P 500, which has lost more than 20% since the start of the year at the closing of the European markets. Unsurprisingly, investors are reacting to US inflation figures, which remained at a high level of 6.3% over one year in May. In turn, growth in US household spending slowed sharply last month, fueling fears of a recession in the world’s second largest economy, of which consumption is the main driver.

In this regard, Jerome Powell, the president of the central bank of the United States, admitted on Wednesday that there is a risk of doing too much in terms of monetary tightening, but that he prefers to run this risk rather than that of let the surge in prices slip away further. No guarantee that the Fed will manage to avoid a recession in the battle…

Inflation close to 6% in France

Inflation concentrates all the concerns of investors. In France, consumer prices accelerated again in June to 5.8% over one year, after 5.2% the previous month according to a provisional estimate from INSEE published on Thursday. In harmonized data, the rise in consumer prices peaked at 6.5% over one year. On the other side of the Pyrenees, inflation reached 10.2% in June over one year, to peak at a high of 37 years, according to the first estimate of the National Institute of Statistics of the country. Thursday morning, it was the turn of the Swedish central bank to raise its key rate by half a percentage point to 0.75%. Like other central banks, the Riksbank must fight with the only weapon it has to fight against a rise in prices deemed uncontrollable.

On the oil side, OPEC+, which met on Thursday, agreed to an upward adjustment of August production, by an additional 648,000 barrels per day, as in July, against 432,000 barrels set in previous months, announced the expanded cartel. Oil prices are accelerating lower on fears of an economic slowdown, bolstered by the latest US data with Brent down more than 1% to $114.80 and WTI falling 3.80% to 105 $.51.

As for values, among the few survivors of the CAC 40 we can mention Thalès or Eurofins Scientifc (0.9%). On the other side of the barrier, Alstom fell by 8% followed by Société Générale (-6.3%) or Worldine (-4.7%).

Orpea yielded 4.6% while the group of retirement homes, in turmoil since the release of a book-investigation at the beginning of the year, published the final conclusions of an audit confirming, among other things, malfunctions in practices managerial.

Trigano ended down sharply by 7.9% after announcing a drop in revenues of more than 10% at constant scope and exchange rates for its third quarter despite sustained demand for its motorhomes.

The gadin of the day goes to Metex, which dropped more than 42% Thursday evening after warning about its results the day before after the close.

On the foreign exchange market, the euro/dollar parity is trading at 1.0466 dollars. the Bitcoin for its part is trading under 19,000 dollars.

Sabrina Sadgui – ©2022 BFM Bourse

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