New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange started Thursday's session up, boosted by excellent quarterly results from Apple and Facebook the day before and reassured by US GDP growth from January to March.

Around 2:00 p.m. GMT, the index of flagship stocks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, rose 0.28% to 33,914.42 points.

The Nasdaq, with strong technological coloring, took 0.40% to 14,106.59 points and the S&P 500 appreciated 0.56% to 4,206.41 points.

The major New York indices, however, lost a little of their vigor after a start to the session on the hats of wheels.

"The way in which tech has shone is truly extraordinary, Apple and Facebook being the most recent examples," enthuses JJ Kinahan, head of market strategy at TD Ameritrade.

"In total, more than 80% of companies that published their results have exceeded expectations of Wall Street," he says.

With more than $ 26 billion in sales in the first quarter, of which it posted 9.5 billion in net profit - almost double the level of a year ago - Facebook has done much better than expected.

Its title jumped more than 6% on Wall Street.

Apple, for its part, generated $ 23.6 billion in profits, double the level of a year ago, for nearly 90 billion in revenue.

Its share took 0.63%.

After Thursday's close, Amazon will be the last of the US tech giants to release its financial statement.

Many other companies were complying with this quarterly exercise Thursday, including members of the Dow Jones Caterpillar (-1.98%) and McDonald's (+ 0.20%), both of which did better than expected.

The American laboratory Merck, also a member of the Dow Jones, has on the other hand disappointed because of the declining sales of some of its drugs with the decline in doctor visits since the start of the pandemic.

Its stock fell 4.25%.

The stock market players also took notice before the opening of the figures for US growth in the first quarter, which grew 6.4% on an annualized basis, according to data released by the Commerce Department.

This increase, higher than the 4.3% in the fourth quarter of 2020, is in line with analysts' expectations and reinforces the feeling of a robust economic recovery in the United States.

Applications for unemployment benefits in the country, for their part, fell last week to their lowest level since the health crisis, with 553,000 new registrations, announced the Department of Labor.

The day before, Wall Street had followed the outcome of a meeting of the Federal Reserve's (Fed) Monetary Committee, which left its policy of supporting the economy unchanged, as well as a speech by Joe Biden to Congress at the during which the American president said he wanted to make the richest pay to finance a plan to help families and education.

Yields on inflation-sensitive 10-year US Treasuries rose 4% to 1.68%.

The price increase accelerated to 3.5% year on year in the first quarter, according to the Commerce Department on Thursday.

© 2021 AFP