US stocks gave up earlier gains to finish sharply lower on Thursday as tech shares lost momentum again after a noticeable rebound in the prior session.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 405.89 points, or 1.45 per cent, to end at 27,534.58. The S&P 500 slid 59.77 points, or 1.76 per cent, to 3,339.19. The Nasdaq Composite Index dipped 221.97 points, or 1.99 per cent, to 10,919.59, Xinhua reported.
The three major indexes traded on an upbeat note earlier in the day with the 30-stock index up more than 200 points.
Shares of major US tech giants, or the so-called FAANG group of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google-parent Alphabet, all closed lower. The S&P 500 tech sector sank 2.28 per cent, among the worst-performing groups.
US-listed Chinese companies traded lower, with all the top 10 stocks by weight in the S&P US Listed China 50 index ending the day on a downbeat note.
The moves followed a tech-led market-wide rally on Wednesday that saw the Dow close up more than 400 points, as Wall Street tried to recover from a three-day heavy selling.
“Whether this pullback is now behind us remains to be seen, but volatility is likely to stick around for a little while longer,” Kevin Matras, executive vice president at Zacks Investment Research, said in a note on Thursday.
Market sentiment also turned sour amid disappointing US jobless claims numbers.
US initial jobless claims, a rough way to measure layoffs, registered 884,000 in the week ending September 5, unchanged from the previous week’s revised level, the Department of Labor reported on Thursday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had forecast new claims to fall to 840,000.