Paris (AFP)

The Paris Bourse ended up slightly up 0.31% on Friday, recovering a little in this weekend rich in bad news which caused the index to falter.

The flagship CAC 40 index took 20.22 points to 6,626.11 points.

The Parisian rating had fallen every day since Monday and, Thursday it had even lost 2.43%.

After four weeks of gains, the CAC 40 fell 3.91% since Monday, its worst weekly performance since October 2020.

This week, the markets had many reasons to worry: slowing economic recovery, spread of the Delta variant, tightening of health measures in Asia, victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and finally, the prospect of a reduction earlier than expected monetary support from the US Central Bank (Fed).

The minutes of the last meeting of the Fed's monetary policy committee, released on Wednesday, were seen as a signal that the monetary institution is now targeting the end of 2021 rather than the beginning of 2022 to decrease the pace of its monthly purchases of active.

This liquidity has showered the markets since the spring of 2020 and has allowed them to rebound without stopping after being laminated by the pandemic in March 2020.

"The market has its eyes riveted on next week, since the only thing that interests you is the Jackson Hole symposium, which will be a real catalyst," said Frédéric Rozier, portfolio manager at Mirabaud France.

This congress of central bankers will take place from August 26 to 28 in the United States and will perhaps be the occasion for the Fed to specify the timetable for the reduction of its monetary support.

On the value side, car manufacturers and suppliers have been put to the test, still facing supply problems, particularly in semiconductors.

These problems, pointed out on Wednesday by Toyota, also affect the German manufacturer Volkswagen, which announced that its largest plant would resume production only on a limited basis after annual leave.

The German brand Audi has also decided to extend annual leave by one week in two factories.

Stellantis, for its part, postponed the creation of a new production team in its Mulhouse plant, due to a lack of semiconductors.

The manufacturers Renault (-1.13% to 31.15 euros), Stellantis (-1.18% to 17.15 euros) and Faurecia (-2.64% to 41.01 euros) did not resist.

They led the equipment manufacturers down, like Plastic Omnium which lost 1.61% to 25.68 euros and Valeo which lost 0.91% to 23.95 euros.

All car manufacturers will be affected by this shortage of semiconductors, according to Rozier, but "automotive stocks will not react in the same way because the groups do not all have the same strategy, or ability, to adapt. from production".

© 2021 AFP