Stocks beat a hasty retreat in the final hour of trading in New York yesterday. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 144.75 points - or by 1.5 per cent - at 9,399.67.

The Dow opened softer but quickly rallied in the morning, peaking at just over 9,600, or up 55 points, before trimming its gains in late morning and then staging an outright retreat in the afternoon.

The Standard and Poor's 500 fell 17.77 to 1,253.41, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index dropped 36.97 to 2,339.38.

NYSE volume totalled 764.39 million shares, against 765.60 million in the previous session.

The NYSE composite index fell 6.45 to 591.57 , and the American Stock Exchange composite index fell 5.13 to 695.79.