The Paris Bourse slipped into the red in the final minutes of trading, ending the session with a limited decline of 0.16%, at 7531 points, penalized by the heavy fall of Carrefour (-5.3%, due to its exposure in Argentina, which is plunging into austerity), not forgetting Alstom (-3.4%) and Orange (-3.2%).

At the end of a two-day meeting of its Monetary Policy Committee (FOMC), the Fed is due to publish its statement this evening before the traditional press conference by its Chairman, Jerome Powell.

For the third meeting in a row, the Washington-based institution is likely to leave rates unchanged, a stance justified by the continued slowdown in inflation, confirmed yesterday by the latest consumer price figures.

On the statistics front, investors took note of CVS industrial production figures, down -0.7% in the eurozone and 0.5% in the EU (or -6.6% annualized), according to Eurostat, following declines of 1% and 0.8% respectively in September.

In the eurozone, production of capital goods fell by 1.4%, intermediate goods and consumer durables by 0.6%, while consumer durables rose by 0.2% and energy by 1.1%.

The yield on US 10-year government bonds fell by -4.5pts to 4.162% in the wake of yesterday's unsurprising inflation figures, while its German equivalent eased more sharply (-6pts to 2.171%), as did our OATs (-6.5pts to 2.713%) following the sharp downturn in industrial production in the Eurozone.

On the foreign exchange market, the euro was stable against the greenback, at around $1.079/euro.

On the oil front, Brent crude rebounded to $74.2 a barrel (+1.3%), as the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) reported a 4.2 million barrel drop in inventories. OPEC, for its part, estimates that demand will increase by 2 million barrels/day in 2024, which will constitute a new all-time record.

Danske Bank's diagnosis is the exact opposite: "the market will remain well supplied, while demand is in free fall".

In French company news, Bouygues Construction announces that it has signed a contract to build the new Trousseau hospital, located in the heart of the Tours metropolis, a project designed to restructure the healthcare offering and improve patient care.

Lagardère announces that its Board of Directors has unanimously decided, on the recommendation of the Nominations, Remuneration and CSR Committee, to co-opt Yannick Bolloré as a director, replacing René Ricol.

Eutelsat Group announces an exclusive distribution agreement between its Eutelsat OneWeb branch and the Libyan telecoms operator RLTT, for the deployment of high-speed, low-latency connectivity services throughout Libya.

Renault Group reports that it has sold 211 million Nissan shares to Nissan, representing 5% of the Japanese group's capital, a transaction generating cash flow of 764 million euros for the French automaker.


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