Wall Street stocks fell on Friday on lingering worries about inflation and higher equity valuations, snapping a four-week winning streak of weekly gains.

Major indices were in the red the entire session, reflecting unease over expected monetary tightening following troubling inflation reports this week in Britain and Germany, said Karl Haeling of LBBW.

"It just reminds people that central banks policies have to be hawkish still," Haeling said. "It was really the inflation data both out of the UK and Germany that really gave everything the bearish push."

Analysts also said markets were primed for a pullback after a strong run in July and the first part of August.

The S&P 500 finished at 4,228, down 1.3 percent for the day and a bit more than one percent for the week in the index's first decline in four weeks.

The Dow Jones shed 0.9 percent to 33,706, while the Nasdaq dropped 2.0 percent to 12,705.

Among individual companies, Occidental Petroleum surged almost 10 percent after US authorities granted Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway permission to acquire up to 50 percent of the energy company's common shares.

Bed Bath & Beyond plunged more than 40 percent after activist investor Ryan Cohen sold his stake in the homegoods store.

General Motors jumped 2.5 percent after announcing it would reinstate its investor dividend in September and resume "opportunist" share repurchases. The automaker suspended the dividend early in the pandemic. (AFP)