After three days of stagnation, the CAC40 ended the final session of the week in green, despite a number of wobbles during the session.

In the end, the Paris index gained 0.75% to 7,315 points, helped by the banking sector, with +6.1% for Crédit Agricole after its results (see below), +2.3% for Société Générale and +1.5% for BNP Paribas.

Over the past week as a whole, the Paris Bourse was down 2.2%, but maintained a comfortable gain of almost 13% since the start of the year.

In recent sessions, the stock markets had been penalized by a sudden upsurge in bond market nervousness, which translated into higher yields, making equities less attractive.

The eagerly-awaited US employment report, published at 2.30pm, ended up being a non-event, with no significant reaction from the indices or bond markets.

In stark contrast to the figures published by ADP the day before, which showed 325.000 new jobs, according to the NFP, the US economy generated only 187,000 non-farm jobs in July, according to the Department of Labor (DoL), a number below market expectations (Jefferies was expecting 235,000).

The unemployment rate fell by 0.1 points to 3.5% of the labor force, the labor force participation rate remained stable at 62.6% for the fifth month in a row, and average hourly earnings grew 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, for a total revision balance of -49,000 for these two months.

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

On the stock front, Amazon gained nearly 11% after far exceeding market expectations with its second-quarter results, marked in particular by a re-acceleration of growth in the cloud.

Apple, the world's largest capitalization, fell back 3% and broke the 3,000 billion mark in market value after a quarter characterized by iPhone sales deemed disappointing.

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 reports 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.

Finally, Airbus announced on Friday that it booked 60 gross aircraft orders in July, and delivered 65 aircraft to 36 customers in the same month.

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