New York (AFP)

Wall Street comfortably settled in the green on Thursday despite the record increase in the number of unemployment benefit claimants in the United States and after the Senate voted on a plan to revive the American economy to deal with the coronavirus.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 6.38% to 22,552.17 points.

Thanks to this progress, the third in a row, the star index for the New York market has left the bear market where it had settled two weeks ago. This expression, taken from stock market lingo, is used when the Dow Jones drops 30% from its last record.

The highly technological Nasdaq took 5.60% to 7,797.54 points, and the broad S&P 500 index gained 6.24% to 2,630.07 points.

Investors seemed to ignore the unprecedented surge in jobless claims in the United States.

Weekly unemployment benefit claims have indeed reached a historic high, peaking at 3.3 million claimants last week, according to figures released Thursday by the Labor Department. This is 3 million more than the previous week, an increase never seen before.

According to Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com, "there was a lot of talk about the fact that these numbers were going to be bad, which eased the shock wave a bit" when the report was released.

However, the expert believes that the market remains under pressure and warns that data attesting to the sudden slowdown in the world's leading economy will accumulate in the coming weeks.

In addition, the brokers were reassured by the adoption in the Senate, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, of a vast recovery plan, which provides 2,000 billion dollars to support the American economy.

This text must now be approved by the House of Representatives, in a vote scheduled for Friday, then promulgated by US President Donald Trump.

O'Hare said Thursday's increase is also linked to "portfolio rebalancing as the end of the quarter approaches."

"Investors who held too many bonds sold them to put their money in stocks," said the expert.

"This movement is not necessarily reflected in the bond market because the Federal Reserve buys many treasury bills there," said O'Hare.

The 10-year rate on the American debt, which goes down when the price of the bonds increases, was actually falling, standing at 0.8319% around 20.25 GMT against 0.8673% the day before at the close.

© 2020 AFP