The Dow Jones lost 0.56%, the Nasdaq index dropped 1.43% and the broader S&P 500 index fell 1.13%.

"The market tried to rebound, but ran into resistance from sellers," Briefing.com analysts said in a note.

The indices oscillated at the start of the session, going back and forth between red and green several times, before falling sharply in the second part of the day.

For analysts at Briefing.com, they were dragged down by several of the giant caps on Wall Street, whether Apple (-1.89%), Microsoft (-2.71%) or Amazon (1.77%), which weigh, between them, some 30% of the Nasdaq index.

"The trend remains downward," said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments.

"In a + bear market + (market that has lost more than 20% from its peak), we see surprise stalls, and that's exactly what is happening here."

The instability of the indices was accentuated by the prospect of the expiry on Friday of options on equities and indices, as well as so-called future contracts on indices, various futures contracts which weigh several billion dollars.

This event, called "three witches" day, often causes additional volatility on Wall Street.

Before the opening, Wall Street had been caught in a deluge of contrasting macroeconomic indicators, which "elicited a mixed reaction from traders", according to analysts at Briefing.com.

Expected to be stable, retail sales rose 0.3% in August, but excluding vehicle sales, they fell 0.3% over one month.

As for new weekly jobless claims, they recorded a further decline, the fifth in a row.

In terms of inflation, the topic of the moment, import prices fell by 1% over one month, less than the 1.2% expected by economists.

The activity index for the Philadelphia and New York areas both contracted.

However, even if the figures are starting to show a slowdown in the American economy, "there is nothing in there that suggests that the Fed (American central bank) will change course", according to Adam Sarhan.

Operators are thus counting on a 0.75 percentage point hike in the Fed's key rate next week and are now even expecting a two-point hike by December, compared to one and a half points a week ago. .

The equity markets were also tormented by the rise in bond rates.

The yield on 10-year US government bonds stood at 3.44%, against 3.40% the day before.

Listed, the life insurance and savings subsidiary of AIG (+0.56%), Corebridge, took its first steps on Wall Street on Thursday, on the occasion of the most important introduction of the year in New York.

The company, which lost 1.28% in its first session, raised $1.7 billion and is now valued at around $13.3 billion.

Adobe was heavily penalized (-16.79% to 309.13 dollars) after the announcement of the acquisition, for 20 billion dollars, half of which in shares, of the collaborative design platform Figma, which had become one of its major competitors.

Gap (-3.64% to 9.00 dollars) took very badly the announcement of Kanye West, now renamed Ye, that he was unilaterally ending his partnership with the ready-to-wear brand, whom he accuses of not having respected his contractual commitments.

Netflix continued its recovery (+5.02 to 235.38 dollars), after the Wall Street Journal indicated that the platform intended to reach, by the third quarter of 2023, 40 million users of its subscription formula with advertising, which is scheduled to launch in early November.

© 2022 AFP