Wall Street's main indexes closed lower on Thursday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell dampened investor hopes for another interest rate cut this year by saying the US central bank need not rush to ease monetary policy.

Powell said at a Dallas Fed event that with the economy still growing, the job market solid and inflation still above the 2 percent target, the Fed can deliberate carefully on rate cuts.

While traders were still betting on a 25-basis point reduction at the Fed's December meeting, the probability sank to 55.5 percent from 76 percent earlier in the afternoon and from 82.5 percent on Wednesday, the CME Fed Watch tool showed.

"The comments from Powell put more cold water on what used to be a very optimistic outlook on the path for rate cuts," said Adam Hetts, global head of Multi-Asset at Janus Henderson Investors.

"However, we can't take for granted that inflation and labor are in balance so this is an encouraging message on the economy."

The Dow fell almost 0.47 percent, to 43,752. The S&P lost 0.61 percent, to end at 5,949, while the Nasdaq lost 0.64 percent, to 19,107.

Earlier on Thursday data showed the producer price index for final demand rose 0.2 percent on a monthly basis in October, in line with forecasts, though the annual rise of 2.4 percent was a touch higher than expectations.

Jobless claims dropped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 217,000 for the week ended Nov. 9, lower than forecast.

"There's more and more evidence that inflation remains higher than the Fed's 2 percent target," said Melissa Brown, managing director for Investment Decision Research at SimCorp in New York. "The numbers were roughly in line with expectations but sometimes investors step back and say, 'What does this really mean?' It leads to more uncertainty about what the Fed does after the December meeting." (Reuters)