New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange finished in the red on Friday, posting its heaviest weekly and monthly drops since March, concerned about the resurgence of the virus and a tense and uncertain US presidential election on Tuesday.

Over the week, the flagship Dow Jones index lost 6.5%, the Nasdaq, where technology stocks are concentrated, and the extended S&P 500 index are down 5.5% and 5.6%.

For its penultimate session before the electoral ballot between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, the flagship Dow Jones Industrial Average, finished down 0.59% to 26,501.60 points.

The Nasdaq fell 2.45% to 10,911.59 points.

The S&P 500 lost 1.21% to 3,269.96 points.

Over the month, the Dow Jones lost 4.61%, while the Nasdaq dropped 2.29% and the S&P 2.77%.

This is their biggest decline since the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States in March.

US stocks "added heavy weekly losses to end the month," Schwab analysts said.

"Global unease persists over the impact of a resurgence of new cases of Covid-19 in the United States and Europe, exacerbated by growing uncertainty ahead of next week's presidential election," they added.

- Uncertainty -

For Maris Ogg of Tower Bridge Advisors, "the big word is uncertainty".

"We are uncertain on multiple fronts, with the elections, with the virus in Europe, without forgetting that Europe is only two or three weeks ahead of us" in terms of the evolution of the epidemic, added this analyst.

Despite the rebound in US growth in the third quarter announced Thursday, despite the results of the big names in tech deemed rather good, investors have focused their attention on the negative aspects such as uncertain forecasts disclosed by companies.

The technology sector and the Nasdaq, which fell more than 3% during the session, pulled the indices down.

At the top, Twitter (-21.11%) was punished because of a slow growth of its users, despite an increase in advertising revenue.

Facebook dropped 6.31%, Amazon -5.45% and Apple -5.60%.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, gained 3.43% after announcing a quarterly profit of $ 11.2 billion the day before on a turnover of 46.2 billion.

The VIX, dubbed the fear index, which measures the volatility of the New York Stock Exchange, rose 1.14% to 38 points, close to its four-month peak, suggesting that brokers and investors remain concerned.

In the bond market, the 10-year rate on US debt rose a little to 0.8720% from 0.8230% Thursday night, helping the dollar to strengthen against the euro.

© 2020 AFP