The respite was brief.
After taking a small step forward in the morning, the markets are looking gray again.
The Paris Stock Exchange lost nearly 2% in the middle of the afternoon, depressed by the crisis in Ukraine.
Elsewhere in Europe, Frankfurt and Milan also lost just over 2%.
London resists better: the FTSE fell by 0.75%.
LiveUkraine: Putin faces '
serious, very big threat
'
Nickel at its highest since 2011
Russian stock market indices for their part fell by more than 10%.
The Russian currency was also unscrewing, with a dollar trading for more than 78 rubles and a euro for 88 rubles.
The foreign exchange market remains however far from the symbolic bars passed at the end of January, that is to say 80 rubles for a dollar and 90 rubles for a euro.
The Central Bank of Russia was then forced to suspend the purchase of foreign currencies in an attempt to support its currency.
Another sign of investor concern, the ton of nickel reached nearly 25,000 dollars on Monday, a peak not seen for more than 12 years.
” READ ALSO –
These bubbles which inflate and threaten the balance of the financial markets
Tension has suddenly risen between Russia and Ukraine.
On Monday morning, Moscow accused Ukrainian forces of bombing a Russian border crossing, destroying a structure without causing any casualties, which the Ukrainian authorities denied, citing an act of Russian disinformation.
Moscow then claimed to have killed five “
saboteurs
” from Ukraine on Russian territory, which Kiev has again denied.
Markets fear that an incident, real or staged, could be used as a pretext for a Russian offensive against Ukraine.
Fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow has been heating up for three days in eastern Ukraine, a region bordering Russia.
Europe's recovery in jeopardy
For specialists, military action in Ukraine would immediately provoke economic sanctions against Russia, followed by reprisals from Moscow on the supply of gas, vital for many European industries.
For Axa specialists, "
a further escalation could easily increase the overall cost of energy in the euro zone by more than 10%, which could be enough to reduce household purchasing power by more than 1%
".
According to him, such an outcome “
would have the potential to seriously undermine the European recovery
”.
Read alsoWill the price of gas double after the presidential election?
Industrial flagships under attack
In Paris, almost all the values of the CAC 40 without distinction were in the red in the middle of the session.
Téléperformance fell by almost 5%, L'Oréal by 3.5% and Alstom by 3.3%.
The industrial flagships were all caught up in the image of Schneider (-3.08%), Legrand (-2.9%) or Air Liquide (-2.7%).
Among the big stocks, only Eurofins Scientific (+1.03%) narrowly managed to escape the purge.
