Wall Street slid for a third day amid comments from Cleveland Fed President Sandra Pianalto that the US jobs market had shown "meaningful improvement".
In late afternoon trading in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.37 per cent, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 0.42 per cent and the Nasdaq Composite Index shed 0.40 per cent. Shares of Home Depot, down 1.8 per cent, Walt Disney, down 1.6 per cent, and International Business Machines, down 1.5 per cent, paced the decline in the Dow.
"Employment growth has been stronger than I was expecting, and the unemployment rate today is more than half a per cent lower than I projected it to be last September," Pianalto said in a speech in Cleveland, Ohio, today. "In light of this progress, and if the labour market remains on the stronger path that it has followed since last fall, then I would be prepared to scale back the monthly pace of asset purchases."
Earlier this earlier this week, Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans and Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart all separately said the central bank could begin easing its bond-buying program as early as next month.
"We still like the outlook for the broad equity market, but near term we're probably in a trading range pattern until we get greater clarity as to what happens with quantitative easing," Terry Sandven, chief equity strategist at US Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis, told Bloomberg News.