Paris (AFP)

The Paris Bourse ended shyly (+ 0.17%) Tuesday, investors limiting risk taking before a series of decisive votes for the Brexit in the evening and while business results will intensify soon Wednesday.

The CAC 40 index gained 9.34 points to 5.657.69 points, in a restricted trade volume of 2.9 billion euros. The day before, he had already finished slightly in the green (+ 0.21%).

The Parisian square opened close to balance to finally recover a little after temporarily losing ground in the middle of the morning.

"There is some caution since the beginning of the week" in markets where we feel that "there is still a lot of wait-and-see," noted AFP Andrea Tuéni, an analyst at Saxo Bank. "A fairly busy week is looming" with "more than a third of CAC 40 companies (who) publish their results".

Especially, "Today is a very risky day on Brexit" even if "it can evolve potentially positively", said Mr. Tuéni, "this is the night that everything will be played".

Boris Johnson's promise to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union on Oct. 31 passes major tests Tuesday night in the British parliament, with two preliminary technical votes on last week's deal between London and Brussels.

The British Prime Minister has threatened to withdraw the bill on his Brexit agreement and to call early elections if the deputies refused the forced march he tries to impose on them nine days before the scheduled divorce date.

Still, if the subject "made the market move a little bit last week, overall, all the bad news we had on Brexit never had a very negative impact on European markets" apart from UK assets said Tuéni. "A line with a hard + Bexit +, we still do not believe it."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, for his part, estimated on Tuesday that for the moment, there was "no justification for a new extension" of the deadline for the implementation of Brexit.

On the trade front, the Chinese authorities were cautious on Tuesday against the optimism of Washington, which states that a partial trade agreement with Beijing "is progressing well" and could be signed by the US president next month.

"We disapprove of the tactic of brandishing the stick of tariffs at every step, all the time, and exerting maximum pressure on China," said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng.

On Saturday, however, China's chief negotiator Liu He praised "substantial progress" in seeking agreement as new 15% tariff surcharges come into force in the United States on Chinese consumer products in December.

On the indicators side, home resales in the United States fell sharply in September, disappointing analysts after two consecutive months of gains, according to data from the National Association of Real Estate Agents (NAR).

© 2019 AFP