Wall Street stocks stumbled on Friday as major companies saw their shares fall towards the end of a holiday week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.8 percent to 42,992, while the broad-based S&P 500 slid 1.1 percent to 5,970.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index plunged 1.5 percent to 19,722.

Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers said the sell-off caught many people by surprise.

"I think a lot of people got very complacent about the idea that we would have a Santa Claus rally," he added.

He was referring to a tendency for markets to fare well in the last five trading days of the year, and the first two in the new year.

"The selling is very much across-the-board. There's not an obvious catalyst for it today," said Sosnick, noting that the trend was more ferocious as volumes were light.

Major companies in particular saw their shares fall, with Microsoft slipping 1.7 percent.

Amazon lost 1.4 percent, while Nvidia dropped 2.0 percent.

Peter Cardillo of Spartan Capital said the slump was both a "year-end adjustment" and due to a rise in US Treasury bond yields.

"That's putting the brakes on, applying the brakes to the market," he said. (AFP)