The Paris Bourse is likely to open on a negative note on Wednesday morning, with limited market initiatives ahead of a busy weekend in terms of economic indicators and earnings.

At around 8:15 a.m., the 'future' contract on the CAC 40 index - expiring at the end of the month - dropped 23 points to 7411 points, pointing to an unfavorable start to the session.

After a positive start to the session, the trend in Paris became progressively heavier yesterday, and the CAC ended the day down 0.3% at 7426 points, in volumes that remained very modest, with barely 2.3 billion euros traded.

Following a strong end to 2023, the Paris market has entered a phase of sluggish consolidation since the start of the year, which has seen it lose more than 1.5% since January 1 and break the all-important 7,500-point barrier.

We shouldn't exaggerate the importance of this movement, however, as despite their erratic variations at the start of the year, equity markets have continued to move within limited trading ranges since Christmas, with nothing to steer them in either direction", moderates Jim Reid, market analyst at Deutsche Bank.

For the time being, no news has caught the attention of investors, who seem to be just victims of a small attack of indigestion after the excessive exuberance of late 2023, which left the markets with a somewhat prolonged hangover", he adds.

In Paris, the CAC continues to trade in a short-term neutral zone, between 7399 and 7512 points, according to Kiplink Finance's technical analysts.

"To move forward again and start a new bullish sequence, the CAC 40 will have to break through 7475 points and the symbolic 7500-point threshold in strength and at the close", warns the brokerage firm.

This wait-and-see mood is likely to prevail until tomorrow's release of US inflation data, which will help determine the trajectory of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy.

The fourth-quarter earnings season for US companies is also due to kick off on Friday, with releases from major banking groups JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

Today's session is likely to be less lively, in the absence of any major economic indicators.

Investors will nonetheless take a look at industrial production figures in France, followed by wholesale inventories and oil reserves in the United States.

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