CAC 40 Down Deep In The Red After Plunging To 17-month Lows

(RTTNews) - French stocks tanked to a seventeen-month low in early trades on Monday before staging a modest recovery.

The mood is quite bearish once again amid rising fears of a global recession following U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs on goods from all nations, and China's retaliation with its set of levies on U.S. products.

Trump's remarks over the weekend that "sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," indicating his stubbornness has further hurt investor sentiment.

The benchmark CAC 40 was down 284.37 points or 3.91% at 6,990.58 a little while ago. The index had tumbled to 6,763.76 earlier in the session, losing more than 500 points.

All the forty components of the benchmark down in the red.

Kering is down more than 8%. Safran is declining 7.3%, while Airbus, Teleperformance, Publicis Groupe, Veolia Environment, Dassault Systemes and Stellantis are down 6 to 7%.

Hermes International is declining 5.8%, while Air Liquide, Renault, LVMH, Engie, Capgemini, L'Oreal, Bureau Veritas, Saint Gobain, Accor, Unibail Rodamco, Credit Agricole, AXA ,TotalEnergies, Vinci, BNP Paribas and ArcelorMittal are down 4 to 5.6%.

Pernod Ricard, Societe Generale, Edenred, Thales, Essilor, Bouygues, STMicroElectronics, Sanofi and Carrefour are also down sharply.

Data from Eurostat showed eurozone retail sales grew for the first time in five months in February but the pace of growth was weaker than expected, official data revealed Monday.

Retail trade increased 0.3% month-on-month in February, after remaining flat in the previous three months. The rate was slower than the forecast of 0.5%.

Year-on-year, retail sales increased 2.3% compared to a rise of 1.8% in January. Sales were expected to grow again by 1.8% in February.

Retail sales in the EU27 moved up 0.2% in February from the previous month and climbed 2% from a year ago.

Meanwhile, data showed official reserve assets in France rose for the third consecutive month, reaching a fresh record high of €305.12 billion at the end of March 2025, from €295.98 billion in the previous month.