After a 3% gain on Tuesday, the Paris Stock Exchange should catch its breath, but a continuation of the rally is not excluded as investors welcome the progress made in the talks between Russians and Ukrainians while being circumspect on the real intentions of Moscow. The trend will also depend on a series of macroeconomic statistics in Europe and the United States, against a backdrop of tensions on bond yields across the Atlantic.
Ukraine offered to adopt a neutrality status during talks with a Russian delegation in Istanbul yesterday. Russia’s deputy defense minister, who took part in the talks, said Russia would scale back its operations around kyiv and Chernihiv in an attempt to reach a ceasefire. But the Pentagon spokesman stressed that Russia was moving troops, not withdrawing them. In the recent past, Moscow has repeatedly announced a reduction of its operations in other regions of Ukraine while continuing its attacks.
The S&P 500 at 3.5% of its record
Either way, modest advances in Istanbul helped the Dow Jones and S&P 500 post their fourth straight rise on Tuesday night, with the broader index back to within about 3.5% of its record closing high. January. Asian markets followed the movement this morning with the exception of Tokyo, penalized by the third consecutive decline in retail sales in February. Observers are also signaling profit taking as the fiscal year end approaches, which ends on March 31, as the Nikkei 225 hit a two-month high on Tuesday.
In the bond market, the yield curve between US 2- and 10-year bonds briefly inverted for the first time since 2019, a move that generally heralds a recession. However, analysts doubt the relevance of this signal. ” There are reasons to believe that, this time, the inverted yield curve is not proving to be as good an indicator as in the past due in part to the huge amount of monetary easing put in place by the central banks around the world “said Erin Browne, portfolio manager at Pimco, on Bloomberg TV.
A barrel of Brent from the North Sea posted a modest gain of 0.7% to 111.41 dollars amid questions about the chances of an appeasement in the conflict in Ukraine, especially as weekly oil inventories rose declined than expected last week, according to data from the American Petroleum Institute (API). OPEC + should not change its policy at its meeting tomorrow, and should stick to the slight increase in production scheduled.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield plans to reintroduce a dividend
The market will also be watching the first estimate of inflation in Germany in March. Also to follow, the ADP survey on job creations in the American private sector for the same month, as well as the last estimate of the GDP of the United States in the fourth quarter.
Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield announced that it wants to reintroduce a “sustainable” dividend from the 2023 financial year and intends to return in 2024 to its performance levels before the coronavirus pandemic in its European activities.
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