The Paris stock market is down slightly this morning, at around 7580 pts (-0.2%), penalized in particular by Alstom (down 2%) and Stellantis (-1.2%).

In an interview broadcast yesterday on the weekly program '60 Minutes', Jerome Powell reiterated his statements of last Wednesday, according to which a rate cut in March was not the institution's central scenario.

The Fed boss also endorsed the 'dot plot' provided at the end of last December's meeting, in favor of three rate cuts this year", commented Danske Bank.

By way of comparison, the financial markets are currently forecasting five rate cuts in 2024", the Danish bank points out.

"Powell highlighted the robustness of the economy and the strength of the job market, and added that the diagnosis he made in Jackson Hole in August 2022, namely that rate hikes would penalize economic activity, had not materialized to date", the Scandinavian bank stresses.

The Fed Chairman's statements may not come as a great surprise, but they do bolster the dollar and US bond yields, with ten-year paper rising towards 4.1% (+6 pts).

With the meetings with the major central banks now behind us, the earnings season should monopolize investors' attention this week, in the absence of any major economic statistics.

Caterpillar and McDonald's results will be released at lunchtime today, before those of Eli Lilly, Spotify, Ford, Uber and Disney, scheduled for the coming days.

Several European heavyweights such as bp, TotalEnergies, Equinor, Carlsberg, L'Oréal, AstraZeneca, Siemens, Unilever, Kering, ArcelorMittal and Hermès will also be unveiling their accounts in the coming days.

In the meantime, investors were informed this morning of a slight upturn in the Eurozone's HCOB composite PMI index, which rose from 47.6 in December to 47.9 in January, reaching a six-month high and indicating the weakest contraction in private sector activity in the region since last July.

This slowdown in the decline in overall activity reflected a moderation in manufacturing output, which offset a slight strengthening of the contraction in services, whose sub-index fell from 48.8 to 48.4.

In France, the HCOB PMI composite index of overall activity remained below the unchanged 50 mark for the eighth consecutive month in January. It fell from 44.8 in December to 44.6 in January, signalling a slight acceleration in the decline in activity. The services sub-index fell from 45.7 in December to 45.4 for the month.

In French company news, Thales reports that the UK Ministry of Defense has signed a £1.8 billion, 15-year contract to improve the availability and resilience of Royal Navy ships.

Casino announces that on February 2, the European Commission issued a decision authorizing the takeover of the retail group by the EP Equity Investment III-Fimalac-Attestor consortium, under foreign subsidy regulations.

Finally, in order to make its services energy self-sufficient in France, Veolia says it is accelerating its deployment of local decarbonized energies with the solarization of its post-operating waste storage sites in the country.

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