Outlook
& news.

Central banks have been in the spotlight over the last two weeks. When Fed chair Jerome Powell appeared before the House of Representatives this week, he minimised the idea of a pause and instead promised more hikes to come if the economy failed to slow down faster.

Europe is accelerating its transition to a low-carbon economy. In 2021, the European Union revised the emission-reduction targets of its climate plan from 40% to 55% of 1990 levels, to be achieved by the end of the decade.

Equity markets are now simply ignoring the Fed and the ECB. Indices have kept on rising and are now above levels seen in March 2022 when the Fed launched its fastest tightening cycle in 40 years.

At its June 4 meeting in Vienna, OPEC agreed to rein in supply amid a slowdown in the global economy.

Buoyed by the strong enthusiasm for artificial intelligence, Nvidia entered the very closed circle of giants with a market capitalisation of more than USD 1,000 billion on 30 May.

Edmond de Rothschild Corporate Finance has advised Aquila Group, a French real estate asset manager, in the opening of share capital to Catella.

Over the weekend of May 27-28, Joe Biden and House of Representatives speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an agreement to suspend the US debt ceiling until 2025.

Markets are nervously watching to see how the US debt ceiling crisis pans out. In the meantime, they have to deal with confusing economic data and the latest CPI from the UK has called the ongoing disinflation process into question.

Interest rate volatility stayed high ahead of the Fed and ECB meetings in the week starting May 1st.

US jobs data for March showed just how resilient the market is. And a sharp slowdown in inflation proved that monetary tightening had fed through to the economy.

The US failed to take the opportunity of falling oil prices to rebuild its strategic stocks and now OPEC has surprised markets by cutting output by 1.6 million b/d.

The equity markets have risen sharply overall since the start of the year, but this solidity is not what it seems when analysed, given that these surges are so focused on a few large caps in the US (and, to a lesser degree, in Europe).