European stockmarkets were generally down on Friday (-0.5% in London and Frankfurt, -0.4% in Paris, -0.3% in Madrid), following the ECB's meeting that revealed a certain reluctance to ease its monetary policy.

At the end of its meeting, the Governing Council decided to keep the interest rates on the deposit facility, main refinancing operations and marginal lending facility unchanged at 2.00%, 2.15% and 2.40% respectively.

"The economy continued to grow despite the difficult global environment. However, the outlook remains uncertain, particularly due to global trade disputes and geopolitical tensions," it said.

"As expected, the European Central Bank kept its rates unchanged," noted UBS, emphasizing that "the press conference suggested that the likelihood of a future reduction may be lower than previously estimated."

"At the press conference, President Christine Lagarde confirmed the impression that the ECB will not reduce its key interest rates in the coming months, preferring to keep them unchanged," Commerzbank confirmed.

"Although she described the economic outlook with a little more optimism, she did not point to any overall upside risks", the German bank adds, which still expects the deposit rate to remain at 2% at least until the end of 2026.

The inflation figures released this morning seem likely to reinforce the ECB's wait-and-see stance: according to a flash estimate by Eurostat, consumer prices rose by 2.1% year-on-year in October.

This annual rate, down from 2.2% in September and close to the monetary institution's target, nevertheless masks a slight acceleration in the rise in service prices to 3.4% for the month ending (compared with 3.2% in September).

In terms of stocks, investors clearly punished the quarterly results of Scor (-7%), Spie (-5%), AXA and TF1 (-3%) in Paris, although they gave a standing ovation to those of Viridien (+23%), which showed a sharp improvement in profitability.