Wall Street Falls On Trade War Fears

Wall Street stocks retreated on Friday on worries about the grinding Sino-US trade war amid rising gloom over the global growth outlook.

Major US indices stumbled after US President Donald Trump said he might cancel trade talks with China scheduled for September and that the US would not do business with tech company Huawei.

Trump's hardline stance on trade came amid a stream of mostly downcast economic data from overseas economy, including poor British and Chinese data on Friday.

"The trade back and forth between the US and China is huge on the market," said FTN Financial's Chris Low, who also cited heightened recession risk as a drag on stocks.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at 26,287, down 0.3 per cent.

The broad-based S&P 500 slid 0.7 per cent to 2,919, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index tumbled one per cent to 7,959.

Uber plunged 6.8 per cent after it reported a bigger-than-expected US$5.2 billion loss in the second quarter, exacerbating worries about the ride-hailing company's long-term path to profitability. (AFP)