New York (AFP)

Wall Street began the week in decline Monday, in the wake of three consecutive weekly declines, in a market paralyzed by economic, political and health fears.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, fell 1.84% to 27,147.70 points and the broader S&P 500 index fell 1.16% to 3,281.06 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, limited its losses at the end of the session, but still yielded 0.13% to 10,778.80 points.

For Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities, Monday's drop can be explained by "a combination of health and political concerns."

On the medical front, investors have expressed their "fears in the face of new confinement in certain European countries and in the face of the fact that we have 200,000 deaths due to the coronavirus in the United States", indicates the expert.

Worldwide, the pandemic has killed more than 961,500 people since the end of December, according to an assessment established by AFP from official sources Monday in the middle of the day.

On the political side, the death on Friday of the dean of the Supreme Court of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggests a bitter political battle and strong tensions for her replacement.

President Donald Trump intends to appoint his replacement this week despite criticism from Democrats.

This makes the prospect of adopting new fiscal measures to support the US economy fading away before the presidential election in November.

The big names in tech have for their part experienced varying fortunes: if Facebook (-1.73%) and Alphabet (-1.44%), the parent company of Google, have fallen, Apple, the most dear Wall Street, recovered at the end of the session to finally gain 3.03%.

Microsoft, for its part, rose 1.07%.

The computer giant announced Monday the takeover of ZeniMax, the parent company of the Bethesda Softworks video game group which notably develops the series "The Elder Scrolls" and "Fallout", for 7.5 billion dollars.

Several big names in the banking industry have suffered after revelations of an international survey claiming that astronomical amounts of dirty money had passed through these institutions for years: JPMorgan fell 3.09%, Wells Fargo 4.34% and Citigroup dropped 2.07%.

The manufacturer of electric and hydrogen trucks Nikola tumbled (-19.33%) with the announcement of the resignation of its founder Trevor Milton, in turmoil after serious accusations that the group is built on lies.

Oracle (+ 1.79%) and Walmart (+ 1.32%) took advantage of the agreement announced during the weekend to make them partners, technological for the first, commercial for the second, of the social network TikTok in the USA.

This project, which could also see the two groups take shares in TikTok, was approved by Donald Trump.

The US president, however, said on Monday that he demanded that US companies have full control over the application of light videos, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance.

© 2020 AFP