At the close of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average index fell 113.36 points, or 0.33%, to 34,451.23. The S&P500 index dropped 54 points, or 1.21%, to 4,392.59. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index declined 292.51 points, or 2.14%, to 13,351.08. For the holiday-shortened week, the Dow slid by 0.8%, while the Nasdaq plummeted by 2.6% and the S&P 500 tumbled by 2.1%.
Declining stocks outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE exchange by 2112 to 1222 and 133 closed unchanged. In the NASDAQ, 1566 issues advanced, 3183 issues declined, and 247 issues unchanged.
Total 9 of 11 major S&P 500 sector indexes declined, with bottom performing issues were information technology (down 2.45%), communication services (down 1.8%), consumer discretionary (down 1.57%), and financials (up 1%).
New York Fed President John Williams said on Thursday that the U.S. Federal Reserve should reasonably consider raising interest rates by a half percentage point at its next meeting in May, which was seen as a further sign that even more cautious policymakers are on board with bigger rate hikes.
ECONOMIC NEWS: Commerce Department report showed that U.S. retail sales increased by 0.5% in March after climbing by an upwardly revised 0.8% in February.
A separate report released by the Labor Department showed first-time claims for U.S. unemployment benefits increased to 185,000, an increase of 18,000 from the previous week's revised level of 167,000.
Meanwhile, preliminary data released by the University of Michigan unexpectedly showed a substantial improvement in U.S. consumer sentiment in the month of April. The report showed the consumer sentiment index spiked to 65.7 in April from 59.4 in March.
Among Indian ADR, Wipro declined 1.8% to $7, HDFC Bank sank 1.5% to $58.91, Tata Motors fell 0.8% to $27.75, Dr Reddy's Labs fell 0.36% to $56.01, and INFOSYS fell 3.4% to $20.46, and ICICI Bank sank 0.15% to $19.69, while WNS Holdings added 0.3% to $86.54 and Azure Power Global added 2% to $15.60.
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