WALL Street stocks plunged late in the session as a jump in interest rates triggered an avalanche of profit taking, yanking the Dow Jones back from its first foray above 6,900.

The Dow had rallied as a series of impressive earnings reports from United Technologies, McDonald's and Texaco helped make a distant memory out of Wednesday's disappointment over IBM's results.

Declining issues outnumbered advancers by a five to four margin on the NYSE, with 1,140 up, 1,446 down and 760 unchanged.

NYSE volume totalled 683.80 million shares, an all time high.

The Standard and Poor's 500 stock list fell 8.67, or 1.1 per cent, to close at 777.56. The Nasdaq composite index fell 9.71 to 1,378.35 after bobbing above the 1,400 mark for the first time.

The NYSE composite index fell 3.65 to 409.15, and the American Stock Exchange composite index fell 1.18 to 589.69.