-US STOCKS-Wall St slips as tech slide resumes, jobless claims rise

* Declines in big tech-related firms pressure Nasdaq, S&P
500
* Walmart slides as tepid outlook overshadows upbeat Q4
sales
* Facebook shares slip on news blackout move in Australia
* Indexes down: Dow 0.28%, S&P 0.41%, Nasdaq 0.72%

(Adds dateline, byline, mid-afternoon prices)
By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Wall Street stocks fell on
Thursday as investors shifted out of big technology names, while
an unexpected rise in weekly U.S. jobless claims pointed to a
fragile recovery in the labor market.
Shares of Apple Inc AAPL.O , Microsoft Corp MSFT.O , Tesla
Inc TSLA.O and Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O were down between 0.5%
and 1.2%, weighing on both the benchmark S&P 500 .SPX and the
tech-heavy Nasdaq .IXIC .
Facebook Inc FB.O shares dropped 1.6% as Wall Street
assessed the wider ramifications of its move to block all news
content in Australia. Strong earnings, progress in the vaccination rollout and
hopes of a $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package helped U.S.
stock indexes again hit record highs at the start of the week.
But the months-long rally suggests stocks now have high
valuations, said Jason Pride, chief investment officer for
private wealth at Glenmede in Philadelphia.
"We are still in the cautiously bullish environment for the
market on the whole," Pride said, citing two reasons.
"We're going to get a vaccine-induced economic recovery,
that's No. 1. The flip side of that story is the markets have
largely priced that in and driven themselves to over-valued
territory. Markets are going to struggle with that," he said.
Concerns over a rising inflation outlook have pushed
investors to book profits on stocks with high valuations in the
S&P 500 technology .SPLRCT and communications services
.SPLRCL sectors, which have underpinned a 76% rise in the S&P
500 .SPX since its March 2020 lows. Peter Essele, head of portfolio management at Commonwealth
Financial Network in Boston, said there was a lot of irrational
exuberance built into stock prices heading into this year.
"We started to enter an environment where risk actually
became a factor once again and notably inflationary risk," he
said. "Now it's a question of whether the fundamentals are going
to match the level of prices that currently exist."
A Labor Department report showed initial claims for state
unemployment benefits rose to 861,000 last week from 848,000 the
prior week, partly due to potential claims related to the
temporary closure of automobile plants due to a global
semiconductor chip shortage. Of the 11 major S&P 500 sectors, utilities .SPLRCU was the
only one definitely in positive territory. Consumer staples
.SPLRCS and discretionary .SPLRCD shares traded slightly
higher.
Walmart Inc WMT.N slid 5.8% after the world's largest
retailer missed quarterly profit estimates and predicted fiscal
2022 net sales to rise in the low single digits. By 2:53PM ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell
112.76 points, or 0.36%, to 31,500.26, the S&P 500 .SPX lost
18.55 points, or 0.47%, to 3,912.78 and the Nasdaq Composite
.IXIC dropped 110.25 points, or 0.79%, to 13,855.25.
Marriott International Inc MAR.O rose 0.6% after reporting
a quarterly loss as the hotel chain's bookings declined due to
pandemic-induced travel restrictions. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a
2.32-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.28-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted 14 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the
Nasdaq Composite recorded 88 new highs and 16 new lows.