US STOCKS-Wall St slips with eye on Fed rate hike in Dec

* Allergan (NYSE: AGN - news) up after confirming buyout talks with Pfizer (NYSE: PFE - news)

* GoPro (Xetra: A1XE7G - news) falls after results

* NXP Semiconductors (NasdaqGS: NXPI - news) slides after bleak forecast

* Indexes down: Dow 0.2 pct, S&P 0.11 pct, Nasdaq (NasdaqGS: NDAQ - news) 0.36 pct (Updates to late afternoon)

By Lewis Krauskopf

Oct (HKSE: 3366-OL.HK - news) 29 (Reuters) - U.S (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) . stocks cooled on Thursday as the market digested the potential for an interest rate hike in December, some disappointing tech earnings reports and a possible massive pharmaceutical merger.

The Federal Reserve, which kept rates unchanged at its policy meeting that ended Wednesday, downplayed concerns about global growth and indicated confidence in the U.S. job market's recovery.

Stocks had jumped on Wednesday following the Fed statement and, after a strong run from the end of September, were due for a "reprieve," said Jason Ware, chief investment officer at Albion Financial, in Salt Lake City.

"I would just say that we had a big move and this is a bit of a cooling pause the next day," Ware said.

At 2:28 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average fell 35.78 points, or 0.2 percent, to 17,743.74, the S&P 500 lost 2.32 points, or 0.11 percent, to 2,088.03 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 18.47 points, or 0.36 percent, to 5,077.23.

S&P utilities,, which tend to do worse when interest rates are rising, were the worst-performing S&P sector, down 1.3 percent. Eight of the 10 major S&P sectors were lower.

Still, the three indexes were on track for their best month in four years.

Sixty percent of the S&P 500 companies have reported quarterly results so far. Analysts now expect overall third-quarter profit to decline a modest 1.7 percent, compared with the 4.2 percent drop forecast on Oct. 1, according to Thomson Reuters (Dusseldorf: TOC.DU - news) data.

Allergan's shares shot up 6.5 percent to $306 after the Botox maker confirmed it was in buyout talks with Pfizer . Pfizer was down 2.8 percent.

GoPro slumped 15.2 percent to $25.61 after the action camera maker posted disappointing results.

NXP Semiconductors sank 19.7 percent to $73.04 after its bleak forecast. The slide took down other chipmakers, with the broader semiconductor index down 2.9 pct.

F5 Networks Inc (NasdaqGS: FFIV - news) shares fell 9.8 percent to $109.49 after a disappointing outlook, making it the biggest percentage loser in the S&P 500 technology index.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 1,906 to 1,080, for a 1.76-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,740 issues fell and 978 advanced, for a 1.78-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 26 new 52-week highs and 6 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 96 new highs and 61 new lows. (Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch, and Abhiram Nandakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Nick Zieminski)