Wall Street stocks tumbled for a second straight session on Thursday as Treasury bond yields pushed higher, while analysts pointed to the consolidation of earlier gains.

"The market had a very good rally over the last five or six weeks and now it's normal and healthy to see (it) pull back and digest that big run it just had," said Adam Sarhan of 50 Park Investments.

Stocks had opened higher in connection with a retreat in the yield of the 10-year US Treasury note, which is seen as a proxy for US interest rate policies.

But yields later advanced, a reversal that coincided with the major stock indices tumbling into the red.

Art Hogan, an analyst at B Riley Financial, said investors are shifting into "wait-and-see mode" ahead of next week's US inflation report, which could have bearings on the Federal Reserve's future policy decisions.

The Dow Jones finished down 0.7 percent at 33,699.

The S&P 500 declined 0.9 percent to 4,081, while the Nasdaq dropped 1.0 percent to 11,789.

Among individual companies, Disney finished 1.3 percent lower after an earlier rally as the company announced plans to eliminate 7,000 jobs in a cost-cutting drive.

PepsiCo gained 1.0 percent following better-than-expected profits as the soda and snacks giant raised its dividend.

Google parent Alphabet fell 4.5 percent, extending a pullback on worries about the tech giant's artificial intelligence initiative. This came after an ad mistakenly identified the James Webb Space Telescope as the first to take pictures of a planet outside Earth's solar system.

That honour actually belongs to the European Very Large Telescope. (AFP)