CAC 40 Advances In Cautious Trade

(RTTNews) - French stocks are up Wednesday morning, extending gains to a third session and hovering around 8-month highs, as investors continue to react to a slew of corporate earnings updates, and look ahead to U.S. consumer price inflation data.

Economists expect U.S. core consumer inflation to increase slightly to 0.3% for January.

Worries about the potential impact of fresh tariffs by U.S. President Donald Trump limit market's upside.

Trump said on Monday that he would introduce 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports from March 12, a move which received condemnation from Mexico, Canada and the European Union.

The benchmark CAC 40, which climbed to 8,067.07, was up 22.33 or 0.28% at 8,051.23 a few minutes ago.

Kering is gaining more than 5.5% amid hopes of a turnaround performance this year following an improvement in the group's performance in China and the United States.

Edenred is rising 3.5% and Teleperformance is advancing 2.1%. Capgemini is up by about 1.8%.

Unibail Rodamco, Renault and Pernod Ricard are up 1.3 to 1.5%. Bouygues, Airbus Group, Stellantis, Societe Generale, Publicis Groupe, Eurofins Scientific, BNP Paribas and Orange are up 0.6 to 1%.

Thales is declining 1.2%. Michelin, TotalEnergies, L'Oreal, Veolia Environment, Essilor and Air Liquide are modestly lower.