New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange ended without direction on Friday, with the Dow Jones stagnating at the end of a gloomy week where markets worried about rising bond rates.

The index of flagship stocks Dow Jones concluded almost at the same level as the day before, settling at 31,494.32 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, gleaned 0.07% to 13,874.46 points and the extended S&P 500 index dropped 0.19% to 3,906.71 points.

The main indices which had regained momentum at the start of the day, after three sessions of decline for the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, failed to maintain this optimism.

Over the week, the Dow Jones gathered 0.11% but the Nasdaq (-1.5%) and the S&P 500 (-0.71%) ended up in the red.

Investors kept their eyes on the upward trend in bond rates, urging the market to take a break.

"The market is nervous about these bond yields. The question is, will this continue and bring the market down?" Asked Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital Securities.

The rate on 10-year Treasury bills rose to their highest level in a year on Friday, at 1.3380% against 1.2956% the day before.

This surge in bond yields weighed on growth-oriented sectors like technology over the week.

Around 1.3%, these ten-year rates "are not high historically speaking but they are relatively high for the recent period", said National's Art Hogan, recalling that they did not exceed 0.9% per month. latest.

The fear of investors is that the adoption of President Joe Biden's massive $ 1.9 trillion stimulus package, coupled with the prospect of a rebound in growth after vaccination campaigns, will cause the economy to overheat and a risk of inflation.

To protect against this, some investors sell their bonds whose fixed income may be eroded by inflation.

This increases the yield of these bonds which evolves in the reverse of their price.

At the same time, institutions like the Fed, in the minutes of its last monetary meeting, or the IMF in a blog on Friday, continue to ensure that inflation fears are overblown.

However, one sector benefited from this rate hike, that of banks.

JPMorgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo climbed 1% to 3%.

IBM lost 1.44%, although its idea to sell its loss-making IT and health branch IBM Watson Health, according to the press, seemed to appeal to several analysts.

Uber dropped 1.03% after a British court ruling in favor of a real "worker" status for the drivers of the car reservation group.

Deere climbed 9.91%.

The American giant of agricultural and garden machinery announced Friday doubled profit for the first quarter and bright prospects for the whole year, in particular thanks to the rise in prices on the agricultural market.

Stock of highly volatile data and intelligence analyst Palantir was up 15.22% to $ 29.00.

© 2021 AFP