End of the crazy session on the Paris Stock Exchange. Over the past hour, the Cac 40 suddenly jumped to more than 5%, before erasing a large part of its gains and returning to the level it was at before the big burst of volatility caused by a information from FinancialTimes.
While developments around the war in Ukraine remain the focal point for investors, the London business newspaper, citing three people involved in the talks, reported shortly after 3 p.m., on its websitethan “Ukraine and Russia have made significant progress on a 15-point interim peace plan, including a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal on the condition that kyiv declares neutrality and agrees to limit its armed forces. »
At 3:40 p.m., red candle. The Cac 40 falls as suddenly as it had jumped on a title from the Bloomberg agency relaying, this time, an article by The Independent that Ukraine rejected the neutrality proposal. This article, titled “kyiv rejects neutrality proposal in peace talks”, is in fact a “live” follow-up to the war in Ukraine, which ultimately brings nothing new in relation to the official information released mid-session that Ukraine is opposed to the idea of a Austrian or Swedish model of neutrality taken as an example by the Kremlin. What kyiv demands is a Ukrainian model. President Zelensky and his advisers want absolute security guarantees against Russia, a plan which would commit the signatories to intervene on the side of Ukraine in the event of aggression. Ukraine does not seem opposed to the idea of neutrality, which implies its renunciation of joining NATO and welcoming any foreign military base on its soil. Volodymyr Zelensky himself said yesterday: “We must recognize that Ukraine will not be able to join NATO. »
Thales, TotaleEnergies and the oil falling
The flagship index of the Paris Stock Exchange closed with a gain of 3.68% to 6,588.64 points. Societe Generale and Renault, which are among the French companies most exposed to Russia, jumped up to 11%, before finishing up 9% and 8% respectively. Among the few drops of the day, the arms manufacturer Thales lost more than 1%. TotalEnergies (-0.47%) also ends in the red. Oil prices fell briefly below $98 a barrel for the Brent (-30% since the peak of last week) to finally come back to 100 dollars at the time of the closing of the European equity markets. Still on the commodities market, note the sudden drop in wheat prices (soft winter red variety) on the Chicago futures exchange. The price of a bushel (-7.36%) reached the lower limit of daily trading, at 10.6925 dollars.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones and the S&P 500 rose around 1.5%, while the Nasdaq Composite gained more than 2%. The New York trading session will be marked by the monetary policy decision of Fed. The US central bank is expected to announce the first interest rate hike since 2018 (+0.25 points expected, to 0.25-0.5%, compared to a 0.5 point increase expected before the war).