Investing.com -- Stocks on the U.S. equities markets fell mildly on Thursday reversing some of the gains from a session earlier, as two Federal Reserve presidents offered diverging viewpoints on the timing of a potential interest rate hike in 2015.
Delivering a speech to a banking supervision conference in Singapore, San Francisco Fed president John Williams said he thinks the Fed will raise rates at some point this year while predicting above-trend growth in the U.S. economy for the rest of 2015. Hours later, Minneapolis Fed president Narayana Kocherlakota indicated that it would be a mistake for the Fed to institute a rate hike this year, adding that it would take four years of job growth at last year's rate for the labor market to return to its level from 2007 before the Financial Crisis.
When Fed chair Janet Yellen said last week that it would be appropriate for the Federal Open Market Committee to raise rates in 2015 if the economy showed continued improvement, her comments had little impact on U.S. equities markets.
Stocks on the major indices fell slightly on the session, one day after the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged by more than 100 points and the NASDAQ Composite index set an all-time closing record. The Dow lost 36.87 or 0.20% to close at 18,126.12, while the NASDAQ dropped 8.61 or 0.17% to 5,097.98.
The S&P 500, meanwhile, lost 2.69 or 0.13% to 2,120.79, as six of 10 sectors closed in the red. Stocks in the Consumer Services, Industrials and Energy sectors lagged, while stocks in the Utilities industry led.
The top performer on the Dow was EI du Pont de Nemours and Company (NYSE:DD), which gained 0.66 or 0.93% to 71.44. DuPont finished just ahead of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), which rose 0.30 or 0.89% to 34.01. Intel might be under pressure to complete a merger with Altera Corporation (NASDAQ:ALTR), one day after Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ:BRCM) and Avago Technologies completed a deal valued at $37 billion. Intel and Altera reportedly have engaged in intensive M&A discussions over the course of the last month. The worst performer on the Dow was McDonald`s Corporation (NYSE:MCD), which fell 2.18 or 2.21% to 96.48.
The biggest gainer on the NASDAQ was Western Digital Corporation (NASDAQ:WDC), which gained 4.91 or 5.20% to 99.28 after receiving an upgrade from Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). Also on Thursday, the California-based hard disk drive manufacturer said it will increase its portable My Passport drive capacity to 3 TB, an announcement that sent its shares surging. The worst performer was Altera, which fell 1.16 or 2.42% to 46.70.
Western Digital was also the top performer on the S&P 500, ahead of Gamestop a, which gained 1.39 or 3.52% to 40.86. The worst performer was Chesapeake Energy Corporation (NYSE:CHK), which fell 0.72 or 4.88% to 14.04 on a disappointing day for energy stocks.