Retail sales buoy stocks but Apple weighs on Nasdaq

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Monday on better-than-expected retail sales, but concerns about Spain's rising bond yields kept gains in check and a slide in APPLE (AAPL.NQ)pushed the Nasdaq lower.

U.S. retail sales for March shot up 0.8 percent, sharply higher than the forecast, according to the Commerce Department. Consumer products maker Procter & Gamble rose 1.7 percent to $66.94, while shares of Wal-Mart Stores , the world's largest retailer, gained 1.5 percent to $60.67. The Dow got a lift from both P&G and Wal-Mart.

But Apple shares dropped 3.6 percent to $583.26, weighing heavily on the Nasdaq. Some investors have been watching a trend line in Apple's meteoric rise this year and said it was broken on Monday at around the $596 level, leading to more profit taking. The stock is up about 45 percent this year and is susceptible to pullbacks.

"It's good old-fashioned profit-taking. The stock is, obviously, seeing some consolidation," said Shaw Wu, technology analyst at Sterne Agee.

"There's a little bit of a snowball effect. The stock's been weak the past week" and investors are increasingly cashing out, especially ahead of earnings next week, Wu said.

Other major drags on the Nasdaq included a slide of nearly 10 percent in the shares of Mattel Inc , the world's largest toy maker, on declining quarterly sales, and a nearly 3.1 percent drop in Google Inc shares ahead of a high-stakes legal battle with Oracle Corp.

Spanish 10-year government bond yields climbed above the 6 percent mark on Monday for the first time since the beginning of December. Spain has acknowledged that it has probably slipped into its second recession since 2009.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> was up 103.50 points, or 0.81 percent, at 12,953.09. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> was up 0.80 of a point, or 0.06 percent, at 1,371.06. But the Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> was down 21.96 points, or 0.73 percent, at 2,989.37.

"Barring an accelerated flight of assets out of the euro zone and into U.S. equities, we see little reason for equities to rally appreciably above the most recent high," said Peter Cecchini, managing director at Cantor Fitzgerald in New York.

"Having said this, we are expecting a short-term bounce, which may lead to a retest of 1,400," he said.

Monday's mixed session followed last week's pullback, when both the Dow and the S&P 500 suffered their worst two-week percentage drops since late November on increasing concerns about the euro zone's debt crisis and weaker-than-expected U.S. economic data.

Earnings season will pick up steam this week, with 86 S&P 500 companies scheduled to report results. According to Thomson Reuters data through Monday, of the 34 S&P 500 companies to have reported earnings so far, 76 percent have reported earnings above analyst expectations.

Mattel's quarterly profit fell short of analysts' expectations as price increases hurt sales of its iconic Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, sending its stock down 9.8 percent to $30.79.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Jan Paschal)

WhatsAppFacebookTwitterLinkedinBeloudBluesky