US stocks decline in early trade, weighed down by hawkish Fed minutes

Major US equity indices opened lower on Thursday as investors digested a hawkish assessment of the latest FOMC meeting minutes. 

Minutes of the Federal Reserve’s September meeting revealed that the majority of the Committee members agreed on raising interest rates further and reinforced market expectations for gradual rate hike path even beyond 2018. 

The expectations were evident from a fresh leg of an upsurge in the US Treasury bond yields, which was seen as a prime contributor to last week's brutal selloff amid concerns about increasing borrowing costs and its impact on equity prices.

Investors also took cues from a rout in Chinese equity markets, dragging the key indices to fresh 4-1/2 year lows on Thursday amid growing fears of a full-blown trade war between the world's two largest economies.

On the economic data front, both the initial weekly jobless claims and Philly Fed manufacturing index came in better-than-expected but did little to provide any meaningful bullish impetus.

During the opening hour of trade, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 120-points to 25,585 and the broader S&P 500 Index was down nearly 13-points to 2,795. Meanwhile, tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index slipped by over 40-points to 7,600.