New York (AFP)

Wall Street ended in disarray on Tuesday, with warming Sino-U.S. Trade relations contributing to Nasdaq and S&P 500 records while the Dow Jones was held back by Apple, Boeing and ExxonMobil.

The flagship index of the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, fell 0.21% to end at 28,248.44 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, appreciated by 0.76% to 11,466.47 points and the extended S&P 500 index rose by 0.36% to 3,443.62 points.

"It has been two days since the market reacted to news rather fueling the risk appetite of investors", between information on treatments and vaccines against Covid-19, discussions between Washington and Beijing or indicators of good performance in Europe, remarks Karl Haeling of LBBW.

While they had not spoken for months, in the midst of the collapse of bilateral relations, Chinese and American negotiators in fact agreed to implement the trade agreement signed in January.

Something to reassure the markets, which still fear an escalation of trade tensions between the two leading world economic powers.

But more generally, in full summer torpor, "the market is mainly guided by its bullish momentum rather than by fundamental factors," said Haeling.

And in this environment, "some stocks have risen a lot lately and it sometimes becomes difficult to take them even higher", he adds.

Apple, last week became the first company to exceed the $ 2,000 billion mark on Wall Street, fell 0.8% on Tuesday after five consecutive sessions of increases.

Other members of the Dow Jones, Boeing lost 1.99% and ExxonMobil dropped 3.17%.

The oil company is the victim of a large stir within the flagship index of Wall Street, which will soon see ExxonMobil, Pfizer (-1.11%) and Raytheon (-1.50%), to bring in the software publisher Salesforce (+ 3.64%), the biotech Amgen (+ 5.37%) and the industrial conglomerate Honeywell (+ 3.24%).

The publication during the session of two contrasting indicators temporarily weighed on the trend.

Sales of new homes on the one hand jumped in July, 13.9% according to data from the Department of Commerce.

But American consumer confidence deteriorated more sharply in August than expected under the effect of a deterioration in activity and employment in a context of the poorly controlled Covid-19 pandemic, according to the index of Conference Board.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on US debt rose to 0.6851% against 0.6542% Monday night.

© 2020 AFP