The Paris Bourse ended the session with a gain of 0.74%, at 6975 points, close to the 8% increase since the start of the year, in the space of nine sessions.

In the early afternoon, the Paris index even made a brief excursion above 7,000 points, to 7,016, shortly after the publication of the eagerly-awaited US CPI report.

Inflation stood at 6.5% in December 2022 compared with the same month in 2021, the lowest annual rate since October 2021 and broadly in line with economists' expectations.

Excluding energy (+7.3%) and food (+10.4%), two traditionally volatile categories, the annual inflation rate stood at 5.7% last month, again in line with market expectations.

On a sequential basis, i.e. between November and December 2022, US consumer prices eased by 0.1% unadjusted, but rose by 0.3% excluding energy and food.

The labor market, which remains one of the FED's most closely watched indicators, remains fascinatingly robust, with US jobless claims falling by 1,000 in the week to January 2, to 205,000 from 206,000 (revised from the initial estimate of 204.000) the previous week, according to the Labor Department.

The CPI seems to be a "non-event" for the bond markets: US T-Bonds are even tending to deteriorate compared with this morning, with the 10-year at 3.53% (compared with 3.556% last night and 3.455% this morning), and our OATs are easing -5pts to 2.626% after having reached a low of 2.54%, i.e. -13pts.

On Forex, the euro gained almost 0.5% against the greenback, trading at $1.0810.
Brent crude oil rose by 1.6% to $84 a barrel, while WTI gained 1.4% to $78.

In company news, Worldline announced that it had finalized the acquisition of a 40% stake in Online Payment Platform, a Dutch online payment services provider offering a payment solution dedicated to marketplaces and platforms in the C2C segment in particular.

TotalEnergies announces the start-up of its 18th biogas production unit in France, named BioBéarn and located at Mourenx in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques region. With a maximum capacity of 160 gigawatt-hours (GWh), it will be the largest in the country.

Orpea (-17%) announced last night that negotiations with its creditors were continuing regarding its financial restructuring project. In a press release, the retirement home operator reminds us that it has entered into negotiations for a 'drastic' financial restructuring involving the capitalization of 3.8 billion euros of unsecured debt.

One could almost detect a desire to push the stock back down after a +40% surge... even though the company never communicated when the share price was collapsing.

Finally, Ubisoft plunged 14% in the wake of a major earnings warning for the current financial year, prompting Oddo BHF to downgrade its opinion from 'outperform' to 'neutral', with a target price cut in half to 21 euros.

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