New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange sank at the close on Thursday and had its worst session since June, marking a sudden halt after starting September on the hats of wheel.

Its flagship index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, fell 2.78% to 28,292.73 points.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged 4.96% to 11,458.10 points and the broader S&P 500 index fell 3.51% to 3,455.06 points.

According to Quincy Krosby of Prudential Financial, "the stock market has grown too explosively in recent weeks, was overvalued and should expect a pullback."

On Wednesday, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 broke their records again.

The Dow Jones had ended its best month of August since 1984 on Monday and was approaching its all-time high.

Since their plunge in mid-March and despite a few mishaps, the major New York indices have started a spectacular rise.

These increases are all the more surprising given that the American economy remains particularly weakened by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and that the health crisis is far from being contained in the country.

Thursday, the Department of Labor announced a drop in new weekly jobless claims in the United States, which also proved to be lower than analysts' expectations (881,000 new claims against 915,000 expected).

Market players will take notice on Friday of the closely watched monthly report on US employment and unemployment rate.

Another reason mentioned by Ms. Krosby to justify Thursday's stock market plunge: mistrust about the imminent marketing of a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) asked "urgently" last week that states do what is necessary so that the distribution centers of a future vaccine can be "fully operational by November 1, 2020 ".

"But on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, we saw doctors explaining in the media that it would not be possible, wondering if the CDC was not being used for political ends," notes Quincy Krosby.

Main victims of Thursday's serious slack, the big names in tech, who have carried Wall Street at arm's length since March, faltered: Apple plunged 8.01%, Amazon 4.63%, Alphabet ( the parent company of Google and YouTube) by 5.12%, Microsoft by 6.19% and Facebook by 3.76%.

On the bond market, the 10-year rate on the US debt fell to 0.6347% around 8:35 pm GMT against 0.6477% Wednesday evening.

© 2020 AFP