Shares of European groups rose yesterday on the positive impact of statements by US Federal Bank President Jerome Powell, as well as favorable results from energy groups and chemicals in the Old Continent. With the exception of Paris, where the CAC 40 shed 0.18%, the rest of European stock markets ended yesterday’s session higher. The pan-European STOXX 600 closed up 0.28%, the London FTSE 100 up 0.26%, up 0.60% in Frankfurt on the DAX and in Madrid on the IBEX, and ended yesterday’s session up 0.15%. FTSE MIB in Milan. . It is worth noting that the pan-European STOXX 600 index did close with growth, but earlier during the session it reached its maximum values ​​for 9 months. And Powell’s comments on Tuesday, in which he once again pointed to deflationary processes, were interpreted as less aggressive than markets feared – after all, investors were already shocked by Friday’s unexpected economic data, which showed a particularly dynamic labor market with new jobs created.

“Right now, investors seem to be more focused on Jerome Powell’s recognition of deflationary moves than on the buoyant labor market,” said Suzanne Streeter, market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. Meanwhile, New York Fed President John Williams and Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed’s board of governors, stressed that tight monetary policy is still needed to curb inflation. The ECB may extend its rate hike until May if structural inflation does not ease by then, as its chief executive Claas Knott stressed yesterday. “The Federal Reserve is not quite ready to cut interest rates. The ECB is more aggressive than all the other major central banks because inflation is a bigger problem in the eurozone,” emphasizes Andrea Ciccione, director of market strategy at TS Lombard. Of the 600 companies included in the STOXX 600, more than half of the 93 companies that have reported earnings so far have outperformed market expectations, according to Refinitiv data. Finally, the energy sector posted the biggest gain yesterday, up 1.7%, driven by a 10.6% gain in Finnish refiner Neste and a 6.8% gain in oil company Equinor.