The Paris stock market ended the session with a gain of 0.86%, at 7573 points, helped by Vivendi (+3.2%), followed by Teleperformance, Eurofins Scientific and Stellantis, which each took 2.2%.

Across the Atlantic, Wall Street inexorably continued its rally, setting a new flurry of absolute records (7th in a row): 27th for the Nasdaq (+0.5%) at 18,550, 37th for the S&P (+0.3%) at 5,596, the Dow Jones slumbered around 39,300.

On the statistics front, US wholesaler inventories rose by 0.6% in May on a sequential basis, according to the Commerce Department, following a 0.2% increase the previous month (revised from an initially estimated 0.1% growth).

As US wholesaler sales rose by 0.4% in May compared with the previous month, it would take them 1.35 months to clear their inventories, a ratio stable compared with that observed in April.

In addition, data published by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) showed that US crude oil inventories stood at 445.1 million barrels in the week to July 1, down 3.4 million barrels on the previous week.

Investors also kept a close eye on the House Financial Committee, on the second day of the Federal Reserve Chairman's biannual hearing before Congress.

Yesterday, investors had initially struggled to decipher Jerome Powell's half-hearted comments before the Senate, before retaining his remarks about the dangers of a potentially too-late rate cut in terms of economic activity and employment, which market participants interpreted as a sign of monetary easing in September.

The important point is that he highlighted the risk of cutting rates too late or too little, which could have negative effects on economic activity and employment", argues Christopher Dembik, at Pictet AM.
"Everything is set for a rate cut in the autumn", confirms the strategist.

FOREX remains calm, with the euro stable against the greenback, at around $1.082/Euro. Gold, meanwhile, is up nearly 0.9% at $2,380/oz.

In French company news, BNP Paribas has announced the signature of a multi-year partnership with Mistral AI, which will give it access to all the start-up's current and future business models in the banking sector.

Vallourec announces that it has been awarded a contract by TotalEnergies to supply nearly 5,000 tonnes of OCTG tubes and associated services for the Kaminho deepwater project off the coast of Angola.

Alstom announces the inauguration of a new joint venture, Hefei Alstom Rail Transport Equipment (HATEE), in Hefei (China).
The rail equipment supplier also announced the signing of a 2.8 billion euro framework agreement in Germany with Hamburger Hochbahn, the Hamburg subway operator, for the supply of new subway trains and signaling systems.

Finally, the European Commission announced that it had approved the Dutch and French support measures worth 10.4 billion euros for the Air France-KLM group, following the annulment of the initial authorizations by the General Court, and intended to remedy the economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

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