The last session of the week was sunnier than the previous 3, as after a fair amount of hesitation, the CAC40 turned upwards and gained +0.6% to 7,305, limiting its weekly decline to -2.5%.
The CAC only survived thanks to Crédit Agricole, which gained 6.6% after announcing its results (see below).

Over the last few days, stock markets have been penalized by a sudden upsurge in bond market nervousness, reflected in higher yields, making equities less attractive, particularly in the technology sector.

The improvement at the end of the session owes much to the easing of government bonds, which at midday were flirting with the 4.20% threshold (the highest since October 2022) and are now easing towards 4.09%.

The highlight of the week was the publication at 2.30pm of the employment report expected this afternoon in the United States.
It was a 'non-event', with no reaction from the indices or bonds, and T-Bonds remaining frozen at 4.18%.

In contrast to the figures published by ADP the day before, which showed 325,000 new jobs, according to the NFP, the US economy generated just 187,000 non-farm jobs in July, according to the Department of Labor (DoL), a number below market expectations, as was the case for Jefferies, which was expecting 235,000.000.

The unemployment rate eased by 0.1 points to 3.5% of the labor force, the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.6% for the fifth month in a row, and average hourly earnings rose at an annual rate of 4.4%.

In addition, job creations for the previous two months were revised downwards, from 306,000 to 281.000 for May and from 209,000 to 185,000 for June, i.e. a total revision balance of -49,000 for these two months.

Economists were expecting a slowdown in job creation in July, to 200,000 compared with 209,000 in April, but the ADP survey published on Wednesday proved to be much better than expected, supporting the monetary tightening scenario.

The trend will therefore not be driven by the NFP, but by the leap of e-commerce giant Amazon, which is expected to rise by 11% at the opening of Wall Street after outperforming analysts' expectations for its second quarter.

On the other hand, Apple is expected to start the session down (-2%), affected by iPhone sales deemed somewhat disappointing for the quarter ended June.

In Europe, Crédit Agricole reported higher quarterly results this morning, buoyed by its universal banking model, which enabled it to absorb the consequences of an environment deemed "less buoyant".

Underlying EPS (pro-forma IFRS 17) rose by 18.5% to 0.58 euro, and underlying EBITDA grew by 30.3% to 3.13 billion, for the second quarter of 2023.

TotalEnergies and its partner SOCAR (State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan) announce that they have signed an agreement to sell a 15% interest each in the Absheron gas field in Azerbaijan to ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company).

For the first half of 2023, Antin Infrastructure Partners announces a near doubling of underlying EPS (+98.2%) to 0.35 euros, as well as a 72.5% increase in underlying EBITDA to 82.8 million euros, on revenues up 43.8% to 138.1 million.

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