Thursday's early afternoon trade: Tech sell-off, jobless data hit Wall Street

NEW YORK: Wall Street's main indexes fell on Thursday after data showed high levels of weekly jobless claims, while technology-related stocks resumed their slide with Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc among the biggest drags on the Nasdaq.

Nine out of the 11 major S&P 500 sector indexes were lower, with technology stocks leading sectoral declines.

The Nasdaq, which entered correction territory earlier this month, slipped another 2% by midday trading with Facebook Inc, Apple, Amazon.com, Tesla Inc, Microsoft Corp, Alphabet Inc and Netflix Inc together losing $150 billion in market capitalization in the first half hour of trading.

Bank stocks slipped 1.4%, while the S&P 500 financials index fell 1.2%, a day after the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates low for a prolonged period to lift the world's biggest economy out of a pandemic-induced recession.

At 12:59 p.m. ET the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 217.76 points, or 0.78%, at 27,814.62 and the S&P 500 was down 43.95 points, or 1.30%, at 3,341.54.

General Electric Co rose 4.1% after Chief Executive Officer Larry Culp said on Wednesday the company's free cash flow would turn positive in the second half of this year.

Ford Motor Co added 3.8% as it said it had begun production of the new generation F-150 pickup truck at its Michigan facility.