Wall St dips on China, Greek worry; energy gains

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks slipped on Monday, on the heels of disappointing Chinese economic data and increased tensions over Greek debt negotiations, though the decline was limited by another gain in oil prices.

China's exports fell 3.3 percent from a year ago while imports tumbled 19.9 percent, well short of expectations, raising concerns about the health of the world's second-largest economy.

"China is a negative and Greece is a negative, certainly Greece is something investors have lived with for a while and it's not a huge surprise," said Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView Capital Management in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ruled out any extension of its international bailout on Sunday and announced moves to reverse some of the reforms imposed by its lenders. On Monday, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Greeks should not expect the euro zone to accept the latest terms proposed by Greece.

National Bank of Greece's U.S.-listed shares dropped 9.9 percent to $1.09.

Losses were capped as oil prices climbed for a third straight session and lifted the S&P energy sector 0.7 percent. OPEC forecast greater demand for crude this year than previously thought and projected less supply from countries outside the group. [O/R]

"It's a little bit of a reverse of what we had before, which was consumer-driven stocks did well and the market in general did well but energy did poorly," said Meckler.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 59.18 points, or 0.33 percent, to 17,765.11, the S&P 500 lost 3.74 points, or 0.18 percent, to 2,051.73 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 11.21 points, or 0.24 percent, to 4,733.19.

McDonald's lost 1.5 percent to $92.58. Same-restaurant sales fell a steeper-than-expected 1.8 percent in January.

Achillion Pharmaceuticals jumped 10.8 percent to $12. Its experimental hepatitis C drug, when used in combination with Gilead Sciences Inc's Sovaldi, eradicated signs of the virus after six weeks of therapy. Gilead shares edged up 0.1 percent to $97.60.

Qualcomm shares gained 2.8 percent to $68.71, the biggest boost to the Nasdaq 100. A source told Reuters the chipmaker is likely to pay China a record fine of around $1 billion, ending a 14-month government investigation into anti-competitive practices.

Hasbro rose 6.7 percent to $59.49 after the toymaker reported a nearly 31 percent rise in quarterly profit and authorized additional share repurchases of $500 million.

Despite some high-profile earnings misses from large multinationals, Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning shows 72.6 percent of the 328 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings have topped expectations. The beat rate for the past four quarters was 69 percent and fourth-quarter earnings are expected to grow 6.5 percent.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 1,461 to 1,448, for a 1.01-to-1 ratio on the upside; on the Nasdaq, 1,375 issues fell and 1,184 advanced for a 1.16-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The benchmark S&P 500 index posted 9 new 52-week highs and 2 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 34 new highs and 16 new lows.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum and Nick Zieminski)