US stocks finished lower on Wednesday after investors sold oil companies and dumped brick-and-mortar retailers after a disappointing forecast from Macy's.

Energy stocks were bogged down by a more than 3 per cent drop in oil prices to their lowest since mid-September on worries about growing US stockpiles.

The S&P energy sector lost 1.91 per cent, the steepest decline among the 10 major S&P sectors. Exxon Mobil slipped 0.89 per cent and weighed most on the S&P along with Apple, down 0.56 per cent.

It was the second straight day of what investors described as largely directionless trading, with the US Federal Reserve widely expected to raise interest rates in December for the first time in nearly a decade.

"The market has internalised the fact that there is going to be a rate increase," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, which has about $3 billion in assets under management.

"The market is going to drift for the next few weeks until the Fed announces its decision, but you will see big moves in individual stocks," Selkin said.

General Electric and Amazon gave the biggest boost to the index, with GE up 1.83 per cent and the online retail heavyweight rising 2.06 per cent.

Retailers sank after Macy's said same-store sales unexpectedly fell in the third quarter and slashed its sales and profit forecasts for the holiday quarter ending in January.

Macy's shares plummeted 13.99 per cent, while JC Penney dropped 1.84 per cent despite a 6.4 per cent increase in same-store sales.

Shares of Nordstrom, Dillard's and Kohl's dropped between 3 per cent and 9 per cent.

Alibaba's shares lost 1.94 per cent even though the Chinese e-commerce giant said sales in its annual Singles' Day online shopping event on Wednesday hit a record $14.3 billion.

The Dow and S&P lost ground late in the day after trading close to break-even for much of the session.

All three major US indexes closed 0.32 per cent weaker: the Dow Jones industrial average lost 55.99 points to end at 17,702.22 points. The S&P 500 fell 6.72 points to 2,075. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 16.22 points to 5,067.02.

US bond markets were closed for Veterans Day.

Six of the 10 major S&P sectors were lower, with the utilities and telecoms index leading gainers.

Apache Corp fell 7.33 per cent after Anadarko Petroleum confirmed its offer to buy the company had been rejected. Anadarko was down 3.80 per cent.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,742 to 1,304. On the Nasdaq, 1,788 issues fell and 987 advanced .

The S&P 500 showed 15 new 52-week highs and 11 lows, while the Nasdaq posted 98 new highs and 113 lows.

Volume was low, with about 6.2 billion shares changing hands on U.S. exchanges, below the 7.1 billion daily average for the past 20 trading days, according to Thomson Reuters data.

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