By 8:10 a.m., the "future" contract on the CAC 40 index – for end-of-January delivery – was up 53.5 points at 8,385 points, signaling a timid rebound after three consecutive sessions in the red.

After a roaring start to 2026, the trend has become less favorable to risk-taking in recent days, with investors increasingly concerned about the consequences of protests in Iran, the White House's plans to annex Greenland, and Donald Trump's interventionism in U.S. monetary policy.

This climate of uncertainty on multiple fronts continued to weigh on market sentiment yesterday, leading to a broad-based pullback in equities.

If no specific catalyst could be identified to explain this wave of profit-taking – aside from reports suggesting an order to evacuate personnel from the U.S. Al Udeid base in Qatar, already targeted by an Iranian missile attack last June – strategists warn that the range of risks has clearly widened.

"Geopolitics, the credibility of economic policies, economic uncertainty, and the rotation seen in AI are all factors likely to influence markets in 2026, often sharply and with different winners and losers," warns Charu Chanana, Chief Investment Officer at Saxo.

According to the analyst, diversification has become more crucial than ever in portfolio allocation.

"The goal is not to own everything, but to avoid a portfolio based on a single dynamic: for example, oil stability, a single scenario for rate movements, a single equity style, or a single segment within AI," she explains.

Some sector dynamics were clearly evident yesterday on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 closed down 0.5% and the Nasdaq dropped around 1%.

Defensive stocks outperformed cyclicals, with technology and discretionary consumer sectors posting the steepest declines of the day, alongside the financial sector, which continued to react variably to the latest quarterly results from several major U.S. banks.

The fourth-quarter earnings season continues today with reports from three major financial institutions – Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock – with hopes that their releases will be better received than those of their peers in recent days.

"It must be said that we are entering this earnings season with particularly high expectations, with upward revisions and broadly favorable outlooks, unlike historical trends. This obviously sets the bar very high," Danske Bank teams acknowledged this morning.

On the economic front, markets will focus today on weekly jobless claims and the Empire State index in the United States, as well as industrial production in Europe, due late in the morning.

On the bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasuries eased by more than three basis points to 4.14%, after topping 4.20% less than a week ago. In Europe, the German Bund of the same maturity stabilized above 2.81%.

In currency markets, the dollar gained 0.2% against the yen, which is not playing its traditional safe-haven role amid risk aversion because of the prospect of upcoming snap parliamentary elections in Japan. The euro slipped 0.1% against the greenback but held above 1.1660.

Oil prices resumed their sharp decline, falling below $60 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude and to $64.3 for North Sea Brent, after Donald Trump suggested last night he might abandon military action against Iran, a reversal seen as a sign of de-escalation, easing fears of a disruption to global oil supplies from this strategic region.

The lack of appetite for risk assets benefited neither gold, which lost 0.5% to $4,612.8 an ounce, nor silver, which dropped 2.3% after setting record after record in recent sessions.