Paris (AFP)

The Paris Bourse closed up 0.48% on Wednesday, remaining on the cloud as to the possibility of a vaccine against Covid-19, nearly a year after the appearance of the virus.

The flagship CAC 40 index took 26.24 points to 5,445.21 points in the wake of a start to the week on the wheel hats, energized by the announcement of the pharmaceutical groups Pfizer and BioNTech of a potential vaccine "effective 90% "according to the preliminary results of a trial still in progress.

"Optimism about a possible vaccine is still raging," said David Madden, analyst for CMC Markets UK, explaining the increase in almost all European markets Wednesday.

In an "optimistic" scenario, the European Union could start vaccinations against Covid-19 in the first quarter of 2021, said Wednesday the director of the European Center for Disease Control (ECDC), Andrea Ammon, in an interview with the AFP.

Between the euphoria around the future of the pandemic and the American presidential election a week earlier, the Paris index has jumped by more than 18% since the beginning of November.

It is evolving at its levels at the beginning of March, when a movement of panic linked to the outbreak of the pandemic had seen the world stock markets collapse.

The index is going up the slope but is still far from having returned to 6,000 points, its February level.

Wall Street was moving higher in mid-session around 4:50 p.m. GMT, the Dow Jones taking 0.28%, the Nasdaq 1.61% and the S&P 500 0.80%.

The soaring in Paris took place this week in parallel with a sectoral rotation of investments: brokers abandoned technological stocks to return to companies more dependent on economic activity.

However, they suffered a little on Wednesday under the effect of profit taking, in the banking and real estate sector in particular.

Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield lost 6.28% to 48.47 euros, red lantern of the CAC 40 after gaining 50% since Monday.

The movement also affected banks, Societe Generale losing 3.69% to 15.60 euros, Crédit Agricole 1.04% to 8.76 euros, and BNP Paribas 2.63% to 41.09 euros.

The French railway manufacturer Alstom on Tuesday published net profit down 25% for the first half of its fiscal year shifted 2020/21 to 170 million euros but now sees "a solid commercial pipeline for the second half".

Its title fell 4.44% to 42.62 euros.

© 2020 AFP