US STOCKS-Wall St sinks more than 1% as tech stocks resume slide

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* Weekly jobless claims stuck at high levels
* Fed vows to keep rates low until 2023
* Technology stocks sell off, financials fall
* Indexes: Dow down 1.1%, S&P 500 down 1.6%, Nasdaq down
2.1%

(New throughout, updates prices, market activity and comments
to late afternoon)
By Caroline Valetkevitch
Sept 17 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks dropped more than 1% on
Thursday as technology-related shares extended a recent decline
and as data showed high levels of weekly jobless claims.
Apple Inc AAPL.O and Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O were the
biggest drags on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, which entered
correction territory this month.
"This has been an amazing recovery represented by a few good
tech names," from the March market lows, Jake Dollarhide, chief
executive officer of Longbow Asset Management in Tulsa,
Oklahoma.
"They had an incredible last week of August, and I think
this is a rational profit-taking scenario at the moment."
The S&P 500 financials index .SPSY fell 1.4%, 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. Banks tend to benefit from higher
borrowing costs.
Adding to concerns around a stalling recovery, the Labor
Department's report showed the number of Americans filing new
claims for unemployment benefits fell last week, but remained
perched at extremely high levels. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 305.79 points,
or 1.09%, to 27,726.59, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 52.55 points, or
1.55%, to 3,332.94 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped
229.56 points, or 2.08%, to 10,820.91.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell laid out a menu of factors -
including wage growth, workforce participation and disparities
in minority joblessness relative to whites - that must be
satisfied before the Fed would view the economy at maximum
employment, and thus even consider raising interest rates.
"Investors love when the Fed lowers rates, because they feel
that's good for market," Dollarhide said. "But if the Fed says
we need to keep rates low for longer, then people start worrying
about the economy itself."
General Electric Co GE.N rose 3.7% after Chief Executive
Officer Larry Culp said on Wednesday the company's free cash
flow would turn positive in the second half. Ford Motor Co F.N added 3.3% as it said it had begun
production of the new generation F-150 pickup truck at its
Michigan facility. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
1.86-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.50-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 7 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 36 new highs and 16 new lows.