* Procter & Gamble bolsters Dow
* Citigroup’s earnings top estimates
* Nasdaq slides on Apple and Mattel
* U.S. March retail sales jump, but NY factory growth slows
* Dow up 0.8 pct, S&P; up 0.1 pct, Nasdaq off 0.7 pct
By Angela Moon
NEW YORK, April 16 (Reuters) – U.S. 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
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 was up 103.50
points, or 0.81 percent, at 12,953.09. The Standard & Poor’s 500
Index was up 0.80 of a point, or 0.06 percent, at
1,371.06. But the Nasdaq Composite Index 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.
