Stocks Opened Mostly Lower as Apple Draged

U.S. stocks opened mostly lower on Monday as shares of Apple were weighed down by demand concerns, while investors faced a busy week for corporate earnings. The Dow Jones industrial average lately dropped 5.54 points, or 0.04%, to 13,482.89. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index shed 2.58 points, or 0.18%, to 1,469.47. The Nasdaq Composite Index lost 7.60 points, or 0.24%, to 3,118.03.

Apple Inc. has cut its orders for components for the iPhone 5 due to weaker-than-expected demand, people familiar with the situation said Monday. Apple’s orders for iPhone 5 screens for the January-March quarter, for example, have dropped to roughly half of what the company had previously planned to order.

The U.S. economy is expected to grow by 2.5 percent in 2013, improving to 3.5 percent growth in 2014, top Fed official Charles Evans said on Monday. Evans also forecast the U.S. unemployment rate would be 7.4 percent this year, easing to about 7 percent in 2014.

United Parcel Service (UPS) announced on Monday that it would withdraw its $6.9 billion takeover offer for TNT Express, a Dutch shipping company, after European antitrust authorities told U.P.S. that they would block the deal.

Jeweller Harry Winston is selling its high-end watches-to-necklaces division to Swatch Group (Other OTC: SWGAY – news) in a $750 million (£ 467 million) cash deal that expands the Swiss watchmaker’s luxury offering and lets the Canadian group concentrate on its diamond mines.

JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE: JPM – news) may release on Wednesday additional results of internal probes into its $6.2 billion (3.8 billion pounds) “London Whale” trading loss that could lead to a lower bonus for CEO Jamie Dimon, according to published reports.

General Motors lost the global sales crown once again to Toyota in 2012, as its sales grew just 2.9 per cent to 9.2 million vehicles, the US auto giant said.

British banks offering over-generous home loans that risk fuelling a future housing boom will have to hold extra capital to keep the financial system safe, the Bank of England said on Monday.