The Paris Bourse ended the day down 1.61%, at 7251 points, penalized by the decline in banking stocks such as Société Générale (-5.9%), Crédit Agricole (-5.6%) and BNP Paris (-2.9%).

The day got off to a bad start with a -6% plunge on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (the biggest drop in points since... mid-October 1987!).... mid-October 1987!).

Across the Atlantic, Wall Street was no picnic either, with -3% for the Nasdaq, -2.5% for the S&P500 and -2.3% for the Dow Jones, while the 'VIX' (nicknamed the fear index) rocketed +57% to 29.2... a real start to stock market panic.
Against this backdrop, Amazon fell back 11% and Nividia lost 4% in New York.

In Paris, the CAC40 has lost more than 3% over the past week.

Boosted by the fall in stock market indices since Thursday, bond markets exploded higher with the publication of US employment statistics for July, with US T-Bonds erasing -16 basis points to 3.815% (and as much as -19 basis points to 3.785%).

The slowdown in the US labor market is sharper than expected, as the US economy generated just 114,000 non-farm jobs in July, according to the Labor Department, well below market expectations, which were generally around 170,000.000.

The unemployment rate rose by a sharp 0.2 points to 4.3%, where economists had expected it to remain stable at 4.1%, while the labor force participation rate stood at 62.7%, and average hourly earnings rose at an annual rate of just 3.6%.

In addition, non-agricultural job creations for the previous two months were revised, from 218,000 to 216,000 for May and from 206,000 to 179,000 for June, giving a total revision balance of -29.000 for these two months (10th downward revision in the last 14 months).

This marked deterioration in the labor market could also raise concerns about the health of the US economy, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated on Wednesday that he was worried about a possible "hard landing" for growth.
These concerns were reinforced 90 minutes later by the unexpected -3.3% fall in industrial orders (the second in a row), when economists were forecasting a rebound of around 0.5%.

These worse-than-expected figures confirm the less rosy picture of the US economy painted by the statistics published in recent weeks, in particular the employment report unveiled this morning, which some analysts described as "worrying".

Friday's wave of risk-offs led to a flight to safe-haven assets: the Bund eased by 10pts to 2.152%, while the French OAT settled for -4.5pts to 2.947%.
Another safe-haven asset favored on Friday, gold, is trading around $2425/ounce.
The dollar is under attack, falling -1.2% against the euro to $1.092/E.

In French company news, AXA reports net income for the first half of 2024 up 6% to four billion euros, reflecting a 4% rise in underlying earnings to 4.2 billion, on gross written premiums and other revenues up 7% to 59.9 billion.

AXA also announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire Gruppo Nobis, an Italian insurance company with gross written premiums of 0.5 billion euros and net income of 35 million euros in 2023.

Groupe BPCE's net banking income, at 5,626 million euros, was up 3% in Q2 2024 compared with Q2 2023, and up 1% to 11,379 in H1 2024 compared with H1 2023, thanks to dynamic commercial activity in all business lines.


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