The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 31.44 points, or 0.18 percent, to 16,974.31, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.75 points, or 0.14 percent, to 1,982.3 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC dropped 15.07 points, or 0.33 percent, to 4,549.23.
Material shares .SPLRCM fell 1.3 percent after DuPont (DD.N) said there were "competitive advantages" to keeping its businesses together. Activist investor Nelson Peltz has urged DuPont to separate its various businesses in a move that has supported the company's shares. Shares of DuPont lost 1.7 percent to $66.80.
Facebook Inc (FB.O) fell 6.1 percent to $75.86 the day after the social network announced an increase in spending in 2015 and projected a slowdown in revenue growth this quarter.
After the market closed, shares of Visa Inc (V.N) rose 3.6 percent to $222.40. Visa reported its fourth-quarter results and announcing a stock buyback program of $5 billion.
Despite the turn lower, equities mostly held onto recent gains, with the S&P 500 up 6.4 percent over the last nine sessions as earnings have mostly been strong. So far this reporting season, 75.3 percent of S&P 500 companies have exceeded profit expectations, according to Thomson Reuters data, above the long-term average of 63 percent.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers on the NYSE by 1,763 to 1,322, for a 1.33-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 1,437 issues fell and 1,245 advanced for a 1.15-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.
The benchmark S&P 500 index posted 65 new 52-week highs and 3 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 114 new highs and 35 new lows.
About 7.08 billion shares traded on all U.S. platforms, according to BATS exchange data, below the month-to-date average of 7.86 billion.