New York (AFP)

The New York Stock Exchange closed on Thursday in disarray, with the market catching its breath on strong corporate results and profit taking, as traders continue to scrutinize a still recovering economy.

The Dow Jones index ended up 0.15% to 34,987.02 points, a breath of the symbolic threshold of 35,000 points never reached at the close, while the Nasdaq gave up 0.70% to 14,543.13 points and the extended S&P 500 index 0.33% at 4,360.03 points.

Like Wednesday, also ended on a mixed note, investors chose to take profits and sell after the first round of corporate results, led by banks, all of which exceeded expectations.

"It could be a classic example of a market that has been a little quick to work" by pushing up, for several weeks, stocks in anticipation of good quarterly figures, said Adam Sarhan, CEO of the company. 'investments 50 Park Investments.

Therefore the market "must take a break and digest all this", he continued, which "will lay the foundations for the next upward streak".

"This is perfectly normal," explained the manager, while stressing that the major indices have only subsided, without suffering significant losses.

Another bearish factor, the lack of certainty on the trajectory of the world economy, illustrated Wednesday by the announcement of a slowdown in Chinese growth, with domestic demand still fragile after the coronavirus pandemic.

In the United States, several economic indicators published on Thursday gave a mixed picture of the country's economic situation.

Manufacturing activity grew at a record pace in New York State in July, and manufacturers noted rising sales prices "at the fastest pace ever."

In contrast, activity in the Philadelphia region, considered a leading indicator of the US economy, recorded a more marked slowdown than expected, compared to last month, while nationally, industrial production and the industrial capacity utilization rate disappointed.

On the microeconomic level, the American pharmaceutical company Biogen fell 6.79% to 328.16 dollars, weighed down by the announcement that two large American hospital groups, the Cleveland Clinic and the Mount Sinai Health System network would not administer his new drug against Alzheimer's disease, Aduhelm.

This is yet another setback for the lab, after the US Drugs Agency's (FDA) recommendations for the use of Aduhelm changed last week to restrict it to people with moderate cases of the disease. .

Also in the medical sector, the American biotech company Moderna closed for the first time on Thursday with a capitalization of over $ 100 billion.

Since the beginning of January 2020, that is to say before the laboratory announces work on a vaccine against Covid-19, the value of the title has been multiplied by more than 13.

Oatly, the oat milk giant lost 5.16% to 19.48 dollars, weighed down by a note from the company Spruce Capital Management, specialist in short sales.

In its paper published Wednesday, Spruce Capital suggests that Oatly has underestimated some of its costs and may never be profitable.

The group disputed this analysis.

Celebrity-popular private club network Soho House made a sluggish debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.

After being introduced at a price per share corresponding to the bottom of the envisaged range, the title fell by 9.57% for its first trading session.

Twitter dropped 3.13% to $ 68.07 after announcing Wednesday the discontinuation of its Fleets application, which made it possible to produce ephemeral videos similar to what Snapchat or Instagram already offers.

The social network explained that it had made this decision due to the low activity observed on Fleets, launched last November.

© 2021 AFP