Global equities fell on Friday as investors took stock of recent gains that pushed European and Asian markets to multi-month highs, giving a reprieve to the downtrodden dollar and shoring up government bonds.
Commodity prices also beat a hasty retreat with oil shedding 82 cents to $71.67 a barrel and copper falling 1.5 percent to $6,265 a tonne. Spot gold was little changed at around $1,010 an ounce.
The recent rally in equities has meant that valuations are starting to look stretched again, said Mitul Kotecha, head of global fx strategy at Calyon.
"For instance the price/earnings ratio on the S&P 500 has risen to its highest level since January 2004, perhaps hinting at the need for a degree of investor caution in the days and weeks ahead."
Growing optimism about a global recovery from the worst recession since at least World War Two, fuelled by a string of upbeat economic data, has helped boost many assets over the past few months.
According to global fund tracker EPFR, investors have been drawing money market funds and allocating them to developed market equity and bonds, including Europe Equity Funds.
During the second full week of September, $47.2 billion were taken out of money market funds, marking the second biggest weekly outflow this year and taking total year-to-date outflows to $331.9 billion, around 10 percent of their assets, EPFR said.
"Whilst it is almost inevitable that there will be a pullback on some days, it is the strength of the dips that will be in focus," said John Murphy, an equity analyst at ODL Securities.
"If we truly are in a bull run, investors will buy the dips. If confidence is fragile, any dip could be perceived as the start of the slump. Markets tend to over react on both the long and short side, so today could well be a barometer for market confidence."
The MSCI's all-country world stock index, which scaled an 11-month peak on Thursday, fell 0.5 percent, while the FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares also shed 0.5 percent.
Banks, which have surged more than 170 percent since the March lows, were among top losers with Standard Chartered and Barclays all under pressure.
The benchmark MSCI emerging market stock index, having reached a 12-month high on Thursday, lost 0.5 percent. Earlier, Japan's Nikkei closed 0.7 percent lower.
The decline in equities helped the dollar find a steadier footing against a basket of major currencies. The dollar index rose 0.6 percent, after earlier plumbing a 12-month low at 76.010.
Since March, the dollar has been on a slippery slope as investors shifted into riskier assets on increasing signs that the global economy is on the mend.
Against the backdrop of weaker equity and commodity markets, lower risk government bonds gained ground, driving yields lower.
The euro zone's benchmark 10-year Bund yield slipped about 2 basis points to 3.33 percent, while its U.S. counterpart was little changed at 3.39 percent.
