Bond markets are catching their breath in the wake of a spectacular rebound that was accompanied by the sharpest easing in yields since mid-March: T-Bonds (which had erased -15Pts on Tuesday) are back up +10Pts to 4.542%.

Consolidation is much more limited in Europe: our OATs are up +4pts to 3.201% and Bunds +3pts to 2.630%, while Italian BTPs are up +2pts to 4.432%.

UK Gilts rallied +6.5pts to 4.263% as UK inflation fell in October to its lowest level since 2021, moving closer to the Bank of England's target and providing some breathing space for consumers.

Consumer price inflation (CPI) came in at 4.6% last month, slightly better than the consensus forecast (+4.7%), after falling to 6.7% in September.

On the statistics front, there was a packed agenda on Wednesday: US retail sales fell by 0.1% in October compared with the previous month (+0.9%).

Excluding automobiles and fuels - the component of the statistics that best corresponds to the measure of consumption used in the GDP calculation - retail sales rose by 0.1%.
Automobile sales thus fell by 1% in October compared with September, while gas station sales were down by 0.3%.

The positive surprise came from the local Fed's 'Empire State' index, which climbed +14pts to a positive 9.1 in November.
But beware: the 'outlook' fell sharply, with companies no longer expecting conditions to improve over the next six months.

There were also plenty of 'stats' in Europe: CVS industrial production fell by -1.1% in the Eurozone and by -0.9% in the EU, according to estimates from Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office.

In September 2023, compared with September 2022, industrial production fell by 6.9% in the Eurozone and by 6.1% in the EU.

Eurozone GDP is expected to grow by 0.6% in 2023, compared with +0.8% previously estimated.

Also in France, consumer prices rose by 4% over 12 months in October 2023, following an annual rate of 4.9% in September, according to Insee, which thus confirms its provisional estimates unveiled at the end of last month.

Furthermore, according to Insee, in the third quarter of 2023, the ILO unemployment rate rose by 0.2 points to 7.4% of the working population in France (excluding Mayotte).
Including all categories, the overall rate of underemployment remains very high compared to the European average, at 16.9%.






Copyright (c) 2023 CercleFinance.com. All rights reserved.