Market fundamental news (December 27th 2013)

This week shows a very positive sentiment. Indeed, we are witnessing a real Year-end rally in the markets. The CAC 40 closed at 4277.65 points increasing by 1.40%.

In the stock market, Alcatel-Lucent closed the trading day in the first place among the french index, with an incease of 5.97% at 3.30€. After its come back in the CAC 40, this stock under-performed its market and was in trouble. Today is most likely a short buy-back.

In the forex market, the EUR-USD currency pair soared to alsmost 1.3900$ which is a record level since 2011. This skyrocket is probably due to the declaration of the president of the Bundeskbank (Jens Weidmann) about its vigilence concerning the inflation. Or everyone is worried about the deflation.

In the fixed income market, the 10-year US bond approach the 3% at 2.872. The New Home Sales were better than expected (464K rather than 445K) and the Initial Jobless Claims also (338K rather than 345K). The investors think more and more of a normalization of the market, notably with the tapering of the Federal Reserve (already $10M less in the quantitative easing).

Globally, the end of this year is extremely positive, taking into account the analysts' forecasts in the beginning of the year. The US indices are at their all time high. The DAX continues to outperform other European indices.

The reasons are justified to be very optimistic for 2014. Many companies are to recover their results and the consumption of households (notably in the US) shows a certain confidence in the future.