New York (AFP)

Wall Street was in decline Thursday at the start of the session, digesting the official entry of the United States into recession and preparing for the results of the four American internet giants after the close.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, fell 1.40% to 26,167.58 points around 13:50 GMT.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, yielded 0.49% to 10,491.37 points and the S&P 500 lost 1.02% to 3,225.33 points.

The New York Stock Exchange ended up in the green on Wednesday, driven by the good health of major technology stocks and by the Federal Reserve's decision to keep its key rates unchanged: the Dow Jones rose 0.61% and the Nasdaq had took 1.35%.

With a historic drop in GDP of nearly 33% between April and June at an annualized rate, the world's largest economy has officially entered recession, according to a preliminary estimate from the Commerce Department released on Thursday.

This fall, however, is less significant than the 35% expected by analysts or the 37% estimated by the International Monetary Fund.

Another indicator weighing on the market Thursday morning, jobless claims in the United States rose again, with new claims standing at 1.43 million last week and exceeding analysts' expectations, according to figures from the Department of Job.

"The key lesson from this report is that unemployment benefit claims are heading in the wrong direction, which indicates that the initial momentum for recovery, which had made it possible to get out of the depths reached in early April, is slowing down", notes Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com.

In addition, the market was waiting for the publication of the health check of Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Facebook and Apple at the end of the day.

The bosses of the GAFA were heard on Wednesday for 5 hours by an American parliamentary committee. Democrat elected officials accused them of restricting competition and harming democracy, while Republicans complained of being censored on these platforms.

The titles of the four titans were all trending downward at the start of the New York session.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on US debt fell to 0.5446%, against 0.5471% Wednesday night.

© 2020 AFP