New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange was down Friday at the start of trading after a smaller than expected increase in retail sales in the United States in July.

Around 2:00 p.m. GMT, its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.27% to 27,821.90 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, yielded 0.04% to 11,037.86 points.

The extended S&P 500 index dropped 0.04% to 3,372.08 points.

Wall Street ended up without direction on Thursday, digesting the announcement of a drop in new weekly claims for unemployment benefits in the United States and regretting the blockage in Congress on a new stimulus plan: the Dow Jones had fallen by 0.29 %, while the Nasdaq took 0.27%.

Retail sales in the United States rose 1.2% in July from June, a much slower pace than the previous two months, according to Commerce Department data released Friday.

This increase is also less significant than expected, since analysts were forecasting + 1.8%.

Market players were also preparing for an important meeting on Saturday between senior American and Chinese officials, who will take stock of the preliminary trade agreement signed in January between the two countries.

On the program in particular: the question of purchases of American products that China has undertaken to make, but which have been slowed down with the Covid-19 pandemic.

These discussions take place at a time when Sino-American tensions are particularly high, between the threat of the Trump administration to ban the TikTok and WeChat applications in the United States, owned by Chinese groups, and the reciprocal sanctions around the political situation in Hong Kong.

The parliamentary deadlock around new stimulus measures for American communities, businesses and households continued to weigh on the market.

"The summer holidays also help keep trading volumes at relatively low levels," notes JJ Kinahan of TD Ameritrade.

“This implies less activity in the market when there are no major headlines and when there are not many quarterly results to follow,” he adds.

"But low volumes can also give rise to more abrupt movements than usual when important news falls", explains the expert.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on US debt fell to 0.6980% against 0.7208% Thursday night.

© 2020 AFP