The Dow Jones industrial average fell for the first time in 10 days on Thursday, closing lower even after a small gain after the open of trading took the benchmark to a new record.
The Dow fell 53.36 points to close at 22,359.23 following a nine-day span that saw the average jump more than 600 points. Apple and Procter & Gamble contributed the most to the losses on Thursday.
The S&P 500 dropped 0.3 percent to end at 2,500.6, with shares of major technology, telecommunications and consumer staples companies all weighing down the index. The Nasdaq composite fell 0.52 percent to close at 6,422.69, with shares of Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook all down.
The Fed announced Wednesday it will begin rolling off its $4.5 trillion balance sheet starting in October. The central bank did not raise its benchmark interest rate from its current 1 percent to 1.25 percent target, however, its updated rate forecast showed that another hike this year is likely.
Major U.S. Indexes
Traders speculated some nervousness around the coming Fed hike caused some investors to sell on Thursday.
"The Fed statement yesterday was a little bit more — well hawkish is a little bit dramatic," said Mark Spellman, portfolio manager at Alpine Funds. "Years ago, Yellen set the target for PCE at 2 percent and indicated that to the world, ... We're still not there yet."
As far as portfolio management goes, Spellman explained that if rates trend upward, investors may elect to move to different types of assets. "If were getting into a higher rate environment, you could be getting out of the bond proxy names and getting into names with rising free cash flow," he added.
The probability of a December rate hike according to market futures increased to around 60 percent, Bank of America Merrill Lynch said.
Financial stocks rose again Thursday as higher interest rates generally correlate with increased profits for the sector. Shares of JPMorgan and Citigroup both climbed over 1 percent immediately after the announcement.
Financials was one of the few positive sectors in the S&P 500 Thursday, with shares of Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Bank of America all trade above 0.5 percent.
"I think the financials are certainly the canaries in the mine," for where the markets are headed said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank. "Another area to watch is the dollar. In that sense, some of the industrial stocks may be an indicator of general strength."
McCain reiterated that the markets may have been surprised by the Fed's more aggressive stance in light of improving inflation metrics.
Nvidia was one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 after CNBC reported that Tesla is working with AMD to develop its own AI chip for self-driving cars; shares fell 3.5 percent. Currently Tesla vehicles use Nvidia graphics processing units as part of the Autopilot self-driving hardware.
Apple is being scrutinized for its upcoming launch of the Apple Watch Series 3, which reportedly has an issue that could prevent the device from placing and receiving phone calls and text messages. The technology giant's stock weighed down the Dow, falling 1.3 percent.
—CNBC's Gina Francolla and Lauren Thomas contributed to this report.