New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange ended on a mixed note Monday the best August since 1984 for the Dow Jones and since 1986 for the S&P 500.

Its flagship index fell 0.78% to end at 28,430.05 points.

But a few days after returning to its level at the start of the year, it rose 7.6% over the month.

The broader S&P 500 index fell 0.22% to 3,500.31 points, but ended the month up 7%.

It had returned in mid-August to a level never reached before, thus completely erasing the losses suffered by the index at the start of the spread of the pandemic in the United States.

The Nasdaq rose 0.68% to 11,775.46 points, setting a new record.

The day's evolution of the indices is above all due to "the ebb and flow of the market" in the absence of major information and many traders, according to Art Hogan of National Holdings.

The meeting was especially marked by the implementation of a big stir within the Dow Jones: the groups ExxonMobil (-1.84%), Pfizer (-0.32%) and Raytheon Technologies (-0, 99%) have indeed officially come out to be replaced by Salesforce (+ 0.57%), Amgen (+ 0.08%) and Honeywell (-1.68%).

Apple (+ 3.39%) also saw the price of its share divided by four, and Tesla (+ 12.57%) by five.

These operations do not change the market value of these companies but are supposed to make their securities more accessible to small shareholders by lowering their unit price.

"Although the changes are only cosmetic, history shows that retail investors often use stock splits as opportunities to access popular names that were previously too expensive for them," notes JJ Kinahan of TD Ameritrade .

"If that happens, it could help boost the progression of mega-capitalizations," he adds.

The latter being above all the star stocks of technology, this tends to boost the Nasdaq against the Dow Jones and the S&P 500.

The market "is now entering a month which is traditionally a little complicated," said Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities.

"But with an American central bank which remains largely on the side of the equity market, we will probably avoid any major downturn," he says.

The Fed announced last week that it could temporarily allow inflation to slide above 2% in the future before acting on rates, suggesting that they will remain low for a long time. level.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on US debt fell to 0.7031% against 0.7211% Friday night.

© 2020 AFP