Apple erases $17 billion from stock market

Apple Inc.’s near 4% drop wiped out $17 billion from the U.S. stock market on Monday, pushing two of the three benchmark indexes into negative territory.

Apple AAPL +0.15% shares fell $18.55, or 3.6%, to end at $501.75 after the Wall Street Journal and Japan’s Nikkei reported that the company had cut iPhone production plans because sales had come in below expectations.

The S&P 500 index SPX -0.09%  shed 1.37 point, or less than 0.1%, to 1,470.68, with telecommunications hardest hit and consumer staples faring best among its 10 industry groups.

“It would be positive without,” Apple, said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at the S&P Indices, the stock’s impact on the index of 500 public companies.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA +0.14%  rose 18.89 points, or 0.1%, to 13,507.32, with Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ +4.89%  leading the gains after J.P. Morgan upgraded the personal-computer maker to neutral from underweight. H-P also reclaimed the top PC-maker ranking from Lenovo Group Ltd.

International Business Machines Corp. IBM -0.14%  dropped 0.9% after J.P. Morgan downgraded it to neutral from overweight.

Shares of Dell Inc. DELL +12.96%  rallied 13% after Bloomberg News reported that the company was in buyout talks with private-equity firms.

Sprint Nextel Corp. S -3.89%  dropped 3.9% after the stock was downgraded by some brokerage firms. Read more about Monday’s biggest gaining and declining stocks.

The Nasdaq Composite COMP -0.26%  lost 8.13 points, or 0.3%, to 3,117.50.

Apple has a significant impact on the major stock indexes. It has a 3.8% weight in the S&P 500 and a 10% weight in the Nasdaq Composite, and is the largest stock on both. It’s not a member of the Dow average. Read more about the decline in Apple’s share price.

“In terms of the general negative sentiment, it’s a combination of Apple and a bit of poor industrial production number out of Europe. That was a pretty ugly wake-up call,” said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Wealth Management. Industrial output for the 17-nation euro zone dropped 0.3% in November.

Decliners and advancers ran in a virtual dead heat on the New York Stock Exchange, where 590 million shares traded.

Composite volume approached 3 billion.

“As the week wears on, we’ll have a much more robust earnings calendar. Of those 27 S&P 500 companies reporting so far, they’ve lowered estimates significantly in the last three months,” said Art Hogan, market strategist at Lazard Capital Markets.

Companies reporting so far have managed to “squeeze out some sort of beat of lowered expectations,” said PNC’s Stone.

Of the first 27 companies in the S&P 500 to report fourth-quarter results, 67% exceeded earnings-per-share growth expectations, 15% were in line and 18% missed, according to Nick Raich, director of research at Key Private Bank. Of those companies, which represent 5% of the 500 that will eventually report, 11% raised their first-quarter 2013 guidance; 19% maintained and 70% lowered their outlooks.

“The new consensus expectation for fourth-quarter 2012 earnings growth is only 2%,” said Raich. “The guidance companies are providing after reporting results is still very weak.” 

In Washington, President Barack Obama talked about efforts to reduce the U.S. deficit at a Monday news conference in which he urged lawmakers not to use the debt ceiling as leverage in the political wrangling over government spending.

With a battle looming with Congress in the weeks ahead over hiking the $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, Republican lawmakers are mulling a government shutdown or default as a way to force cuts in government spending. Read a blog post on the U.S. Treasury thinking the unthinkable about the debt ceiling.

In separate statements, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the debt-ceiling debate the “perfect time” to confront government spending, and House Speaker John Boehner also indicated his intention to link spending cuts to hiking the debt ceiling.

The Treasury market did not signal distress over the danger of a government default, with yields on the benchmark 10-year note 10_YEAR +0.16%  off 1 basis point, or 0.01 percentage point, to 1.85%.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke at 4 p.m. Eastern in Michigan, following comments delivered by Chicago Fed President Charles Evans that the central bank should continue to keep monetary policy accommodative as lawmakers cut U.S. spending.

“The market will be watching Bernanke to get a better take on when the Fed might start to take the punch bowl away,” said Stone of the Fed’s monetary policy.