The Paris stock market has tipped into negative territory since the opening of Wall Street: the decline remained modest at the end of the session (-0.29%) to 8065Pts.

Our OATs eased a little more sharply, by -7Pts to 3.02%, Bunds by -5.5Pts to 2.5200% (inflation in Germany stands at +2.2%), Italian BTPs by -8Pts to 3.81%.

We really can't call the maintenance of our debt rating by Moody's and Fitch a hat-trick.

The same scenario for the Euro-Stoxx50, which lost -0.46%: the pan-European index fell back below 5,000Pts, moving against the trend.000Pts, bucking the trend of the US indices, whose gains ranged from +0.2% for the Dow to +14% for the S&P500 and the Nasdaq (boosted by Tesla, which will finally be able to experiment with automatic driving in China).

Closely watched after Moody's and Fitch's decision, the Euro rallied +0.2% against the Dollar to 1.0715, and it was a day without much volatility, except for the $/Yen pair, where the Japanese currency rebounded +1.2%, from 158.3 on Friday to 156.7 (BOJ intervention).

Although most European markets will be closed on Wednesday for the May 1st holiday, the week's economic agenda promises to be a busy one, culminating in the Fed's monetary policy meeting on Wednesday evening.

No rate changes are expected on this occasion, but investors will once again be looking to Chairman Jerome Powell to clear up the fog in which they have been operating for the past few weeks.

This comes at a time when the latest US inflation figures have rekindled fears that the Federal Reserve's monetary policy will be eased later than expected, and that this may not materialize until November.

Employment figures, due out on Friday, should testify to the strength of the US economy, with 250,000 new jobs expected in April.000 jobs are expected to be created in April, compared with 303,000 in March.

In the US, T-Bonds start the week on a positive note, with -5pts to 4.6200%... the '2-year' eases by 5% to 4.975%: nothing spectacular either.

If rates continue to ease, the week ahead could see the technology-weighted index return to its all-time highs, boosted by the results of the sector's mega-cap companies.

The quarterly performances of Amazon on Tuesday evening, followed by Apple on Thursday, will shed light on the current form of the tech giants and their ability to continue dragging equity markets higher.

Among the avalanche of results expected across the Atlantic later this week are those of AMD, 3M, Coca-Cola, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, McDonald's and Qualcomm.

In Europe, the accounts of adidas, ArcelorMittal, Crédit Agricole, Legrand, Mercedez-Benz, Société Générale and Volkswagen will also be closely watched.

In the news from French companies, Vivendi posted sales of over 4.27 billion euros for the first three months of 2024, up 86.6%, mainly generated by the consolidation of Lagardère, as well as higher sales at Groupe Canal+ and Havas.

Bolloré announced sales of 5.02 billion euros for the first quarter of 2024, up 63% on a reported basis, mainly due to the full consolidation of Lagardère at Vivendi.

On Monday, Atos announced that it had received a non-binding letter of intent from the French government to acquire 100% of its supercomputing, mission-critical systems and cybersecurity businesses.

Société Générale Group has announced the signature of a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) for solar-generated electricity with French producer JP Energie Environnement (Jpee).

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