The Paris stock market ended the session down 1.54% at 7,098 points, penalized by the heavy downturn in the automotive sector, with Renault down 4.3%, Stellantis down 3.5% and Michelin down 3.1% on the CAC40. On the SBF 120, automotive sector stocks also suffered, with Valeo down 5.9% and Faurecia down 5.3%.

With a decline of almost 3% over the last three sessions, the start of the week for the Paris index is completely at odds with the macro news.

On Wall Street, the S&P, Dow Jones and Nasdaq are all down by just under 1%, while a decisive vote is expected today in the Republican-majority House of Representatives and on Friday in the Democratic-majority Senate on raising the debt ceiling.

The issue is all the more worrying given that the Treasury Department has estimated June 5 as the date by which the government will run out of cash.

The market's gloom is rather paradoxical this Wednesday, given that the risk of a shutdown between now and June 5 has been 90% ruled out in the United States, and the day's inflation figures are reassuring.

On the statistics front, inflation in France slowed to 5.1%, marking a clear deceleration after +5.9% the previous month.
Growth (GDP) in Q1 came out at 0.2% (no recession, unlike in Germany) according to detailed CVS-CJO data from Insee, following stagnation in Q4 2022.

The difficulty at the moment is to gather enough elements to boost the Paris index' progression", say Kiplink Finance's analysts.

On the bond front, German Bunds have eased -7pts to 2.27%, our OATs -6pts to 2.842%, US T-Bonds -4.2pts to 3.66%.

In French company news, Stellantis, in collaboration with TotalEnergies and Mercedes-Benz, inaugurated the Automotive Cells Company (ACC) battery gigafactory at the Billy-Berclau/Douvrin site in France, the first of three gigafactories planned for Europe.

Moody's has also announced that it has changed its outlook on Stellantis from 'stable' to 'positive', on its confirmed long-term issuer and senior unsecured ratings to 'Baa2', and on its other short-term ratings to '(P)P-2'.

TotalEnergies said on Wednesday that it would be teaming up with Belgian start-up TES to develop an e-gas production unit in the USA. The company also announced that it had signed a production sharing contract for the Agua Marinha block in Brazil.

Finally, Bouygues announced the successful placement of an eight-year, €1 billion bond issue (maturing July 17, 2031), bearing a coupon of 3.875%, 'confirming the market's confidence in the Group's credit quality'.

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