Stocks Snap Winning Streak

Apple (AAPL) weighed on the broad markets on Monday with the shares losing more than 3% following a report over the weekend in the The New York Times that criticized the company's taxpaying practices.

In the broad market, losers outpaced winners by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. The VIX, which measures market volatility through options activity in the S&P 500, jumped 5% to settle at 17.15. A move above 20 is viewed as indicative of rising market fear.

Before the bell, the Commerce Department posted slightly better-than-expected personal income data for March along with a slight miss on personal spending for the period. Income rose 0.4%, compared with the 0.3% rise expected by economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

Personal spending was up 0.3%, compared with 0.4% improvement expected by economists. In February, income rose by an upwardly-revised 0.3% and spending increased by an upwardly-revised 0.9%.

The consumer data was followed by a worse-than-expected read on Chicago-area business activity. The April Chicago purchasing managers index registered a bigger than expected fall to 56.2 in April, from 62.2 in March, according to the Institute for Supply Management Chicago. Economists were expecting the business barometer to fall to 61, according to a Thomson Reuters survey. The barometer has now fallen for a second straight month, with production at its lowest level since Sept. 2009.

London's FTSE fell 0.7% and Germany's DAX was down 0.6% as Spain headed towards a recession.

Spanish gross domestic product contracted less than previously forecast in the first quarter, down 0.3% and unchanged from the preceding three months, according to the National Statistics Institute in Madrid. On April 23, the Bank of Spain had announced a decline of 0.4%. The National Statistics Institute also said that GDP fell 0.4% from a year ago in the first quarter.

"This behavior was due to the negative contribution by domestic demand, partly compensated by the positive contribution of foreign demand," the Institute said in a press release.

Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.7% and Japan's Nikkei Average finished down 0.4%.

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