New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange finally ended in the green on Thursday a jagged session, hesitating between the soaring oil prices and the explosion of unemployment benefit requests in the United States.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, took 2.24% to finish at 21,413.44 points. The highly technological Nasdaq gained 1.72% to 7,487.31 points. The broader S&P 500 Index, which represents the 500 largest companies on Wall Street, appreciated 2.28% to 2,526.90 points.

The indices were driven by the prices of barrels of oil which, in New York (+ 25%) as in London (+ 21%), recorded the highest increase in their history.

They flew after tweets from US President Donald Trump, promising a reduction in Russian and Saudi production to rebalance a black gold market devastated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Doubts quickly appeared, however, over the claims of the White House tenant, who spoke of a drop of 10 to 15 million barrels, and the indices temporarily fell.

At the start of the session, investors were shocked by the figures on new unemployment benefit claims, which showed that 6.6 million people had filed a claim last week.

This is double the previous week.

"Keep in mind that many more people may have tried to register, but were unable to do so due to saturated systems," said Christopher Low, economist at FTN Financial.

With nearly 10 million people having filed unemployment benefit claims in two weeks, out of the 152.3 million working workers in February, the unemployment rate is "now probably around 10%", advance t -he.

This figure should not appear in the monthly report on employment in the United States, which will be published on Friday. This will not fully take into account the massive containment measures gradually imposed in several American states since mid-March, which have forced very many companies to close or drastically reduce their activity.

But the statistics on unemployment benefit claims already reflect the strong impact of the health crisis on the economy and have rekindled investor fears about its consequences for listed companies.

For Eric Freedman, in charge of the investment strategy at US Bank, "the weakness that the world economy will have to absorb is not yet fully integrated by the markets".

On the unemployed, for example, "the question is how many will be rehired thanks to the various aid plans announced last week," he said. And the answer "is far from obvious".

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on the US debt stabilized and moved at 0.580%, against 0.583% on Tuesday at the close.

© 2020 AFP