New York (AFP)

Wall Street ended in green on Monday, the prospect of a gradual economic recovery outweighing concerns over Sino-US tensions and protests against police brutality in the United States.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, took 0.36% to 25,475.02 points and the Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, 0.66% to 9,552.05 points.

The S&P 500, which represents the 500 largest companies on Wall Street, appreciated by 0.38% to 3,055.73 points.

"The market is clearly focused on reopening the economy," said Karl Haeling of LBBW.

"The trend is towards a slowdown in new cases (from Covid-19) and the authorities continue to provide financial support, both budgetary and monetary," he said. As many investors have dramatically reduced their exposure to the equity market since the onset of the health crisis, they tend to bet money again on listed companies, said the specialist.

The two major sources of concern of the day were in this context relegated to the background.

On the Sino-American tensions front, China on Monday raised the threat of a "counter-attack" after Donald Trump announced a series of sanctions and restrictions targeting Chinese interests.

According to information from the Bloomberg agency, the Chinese authorities have notably asked public companies to suspend their purchases of American agricultural products.

But "investors seem to believe that the two countries will not go so far as to renounce the partial trade agreement signed in January," said Haeling.

Regarding the demonstrations, sometimes violent, which have followed one another in the United States in recent days, "history shows that there is no correlation between socio-political unrest and the American stock market", underlines Nicholas Colas of DataTrek cabinet.

"What matters to the markets today is knowing when and how the US economy will recover from the Covid-19 crisis," he said. In this regard, "if the protests or the political consequences start to affect consumer confidence, then that would weigh on the stock price for longer than a week or two."

Some observers "also fear that the protests will lead to a new wave of Covid-19 cases that may lead some states to restore containment measures," said Haeling.

"But these tensions also suggest that parliamentary officials will be more inclined to adopt a new set of support measures," he added.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on the American debt rose, moving to 0.6787% against 0.6526% on Friday evening.

© 2020 AFP