New York (AFP)

Wall Street progressed at the opening Friday, the main indices evolving at new levels, driven by the satisfactory quarterly results of several listed companies and an indicator deemed reassuring.

Around 3:00 p.m. GMT, its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, appreciated by 0.10% to 29,328.19 points.

The highly technological Nasdaq rose 0.12% to 9,368.39 points and the S&P 500, which represents the 500 largest companies on Wall Street, gained 0.17% to 3,322.35 points.

The New York Stock Exchange had reached new records Thursday, galvanized by advances on the commercial front, American indicators of good performance and the solid results of Morgan Stanley: the Dow Jones had appreciated by 0.92%, the Nasdaq 1.06% and the S&P 500 0.84%.

"The early days of 2020 were pretty good from a profit perspective," says Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.

Among the big names on the New York coast to report their quarterly health check this week, the insurer UnitedHealth, the asset manager BlackRock or the bank Morgan Stanley have done much better than expected.

According to Factset, just over 8% of S&P 500 companies have already published their results, almost three-quarters of them exceeding analysts' expectations. Several tech giants like Netflix, Intel and IBM will be doing this exercise next week.

Among the indicators, housing starts in the United States recorded a strong increase (+ 16.9%) over a month in December, reaching their highest level since December 2006, thanks to mild weather and low interest rates, according to Commerce Department data released Friday.

In contrast, US industrial production fell 0.3% in December compared with November, and is below expectations, weighed down by the drop in demand for heating, temperatures having been unusually mild, according to data released Friday by the Federal Reserve (Fed).

For its part, China saw its growth fall last year to 6.1%, its lowest in nearly 30 years, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (BNS) published on Friday. This slowdown is largely due to the intensification of the trade war with the United States.

Washington and Beijing on Wednesday signed a preliminary trade agreement designed as a truce in the standoff that the two countries have been engaged in for nearly two years.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on the American debt rose, standing at 1.832% against 1.807% the day before at the close.

© 2020 AFP