CAC 40 Rises 1.1% As Stocks Rally On Fed Interest Rate Cut

(RTTNews) - French stocks are firmly settled in positive territory on Thursday, as the Federal Reserve's 25-basis point interest rate cut and signaling of more easing this year, lifted investor sentiment.

Investors are now awaiting the Bank of England's monetary policy announcement, and the European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde's speech.

The benchmark CAC 40 was up 87.75 points or 1.13% at 7,874.73 a few minutes ago.

STMicroElectronics is gaining 4.3%. Legrand is up 3.7% and Capgemini is climbing up 3.2%. Schneider Electric is advancing nearly 3%.

ArcelorMittal, Dassault Systemes, Hermes International, Safran, Stellantis, LVMH, Saint Gobain, EssilorLuxottica, Accor and Sanofi gained 1.3 to 2.7%. Kering, Vinci, Teleperformance and BNP Paribas also ended notably higher.

Michelin is down by about 1.2%. Eurofins Scientific, Pernod Ricard and Danone are down 0.4 to 0.7%.

In economic news, the euro area current account surplus declined in July as the surplus on services trade and primary income decreased from June, the European Central Bank said.

The current account surplus fell to EUR 27.7 billion from EUR 35.8 billion in June. In the same period last year, the surplus totalled EUR 31.6 billion.

The surplus on goods trade rose to EUR 25 billion from EUR 23 billion in the previous month, while the surplus on services decreased to EUR 12 billion from EUR 16 billion.

The primary income halved to EUR 7 billion from EUR 14 billion. At the same time, the shortfall in secondary income narrowed to EUR 16 billion from EUR 17 billion.

In the twelve months to July, the current account surplus was EUR 315 billion or 2% of GDP. However, this was down from EUR 394 billion or 2.6% of GDP in the same period last year.