The dollar rose against the euro on Thursday, taking advantage of a lower appetite for risk, which was reflected, in particular, in the fall of several major indices on Wall Street.

Around 19:00 GMT (21:00 in Paris), the euro lost 0.31% against the greenback, at $1.295. On Wednesday, the European currency rose by 0.5%.

Generally considered a safe haven, the dollar tends to appreciate when the stock market falls. This was the case with the Dow Jones Indices (-1.00%) and S&P 500 (-0.22%) just under an hour before the New York Stock Exchange closed.

“Right now, the correlation between the dollar and the equity market is at its strongest since 2012", Tempus FX analysts note.

Better-than-expected numbers on weekly US unemployment benefit claims on Thursday were not enough to give investors a strong taste for risk.

The United States recorded 1.314 million new unemployment registrations in a week, down from the previous week and slightly less than expected by analysts, according to Labor Department data.

In total, 18 million people were unemployed in the country, also down from the previous week but still at a particularly high level: last year at the same period, 1.7 million Americans received unemployment benefits.

On the health front, the coronavirus pandemic is accelerating globally according to the World Health Organization. On Thursday, Australia decided to reconfine the five million inhabitants of Melbourne, the country's second largest city, while the United States passed the threshold of three million infected people.

In France, the president of the Scientific Council responsible for guiding the government, Jean-François Delfraissy, warned that a rebound of the epidemic in the country was possible in October/November, or even this summer if the barrier measures are neglected.

In addition, Irish Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe (center right) was elected by his eurozone peers as president of the Eurogroup on Thursday, a key position at a time when the continent is facing the worst recession in its history.