BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Despite Fitch Ratings lowering France's long-term credit rating, citing climbing debt and political instability, the French stock market is up in positive territory on Monday with investors looking ahead to the policy announcements from the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan this week.
The Fed is widely expected to lower interest rate by 25 basis points, while the BoE and BoJ are seen holding their rates steady.
The benchmark CAC 40 was up 95.78 points or 1.23% at 7,921.02 a few minutes ago.
Kering is rising more than 4%. Thales is up nearly 4%. STMicroElectronics and Societe Generale are up 3.1% and 2.85%, respectively.
Credit Agricole, L'Oreal, LVMH and Airbus are up 2 to 2.2%. BNP Paribas, Bouygues, Stellantis, Credit Agricole, Accor, Safran, Saint Gobain, Vinci, TotalEnergies, Unibail Rodamco, Hermes International and Engie are up 1 to 1.8%.
Edenred, Bureau Veritas, Dassault Systemes, Publicis Groupe and Sanofi are down in negative territory, losing between 0.4 to 1%.
In economic news, the euro area trade surplus declined in July as exports registered only a moderate growth, data from Eurostat showed.
The trade surplus fell to EUR 12.4 billion in July from EUR 18.5 billion in the previous year. Nonetheless, the surplus was above June's level of EUR 8 billion.
The annual growth in exports halved to 0.4% from 0.8% in June. At the same time, imports advanced 3.1%, after rising 6.8% a month ago.
The decline of EUR 6.1 billion in the trade surplus was mainly due to chemicals and related products, which experienced a decline in surplus to EUR 17.4 billion from EUR 23.8 billion.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the trade surplus rose to EUR 12.1 billion in July from EUR 7.9 billion in June. The improvement was primarily driven by increases in the surpluses of chemicals and related products, Eurostat said.
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