Wall St falls late afternoon; Apple shares cut gain

By Caroline Valetkevitch

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were down sharply in late afternoon trading on Tuesday in a broad selloff as shares of Apple cut earlier gains.

Apple, which jumped earlier in the session after it unveiled a smartwatch, was last up 0.2 percent in heavy volume.

All 10 S&P sectors were lower. Shares of Home Depot were down 2.2 percent, among the biggest drags on the Dow and S&P 500, a day after the company confirmed its payment security system had been breached.

Also weighing on the market, McDonald's shares were down 1.5 percent as it reported lower August same-store sales in all regions.

The Dow Jones industrial average was falling 100.42 points, or 0.59 percent, to 17,011, the S&P 500 was losing 13.22 points, or 0.66 percent, to 1,988.32 and the Nasdaq Composite was dropping 37.24 points, or 0.81 percent, to 4,555.05.

The largest percentage gainer on the New York Stock Exchange was Pulse Electronics, rising 67.33 percent, while the largest percentage decliner was MaxLinear, down 16.53 percent. MaxLinear cut its third-quarter revenue outlook on Monday.

Among the most active stocks on the NYSE were Petrobras, down 3.60 percent to $17.69 and Rite Aid, down 1.94 percent to $6.34.

Besides Apple, Yahoo, down 2.5 percent at $40.76 and SinoCoking Coal, up 175.0 percent to $8.03 were the most actively traded.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by 2,304 to 714, for a 3.23-to-1 ratio on the downside; on the Nasdaq, 1,961 issues were falling and 711 advancing for a 2.76-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The broad S&P 500 index was posting 17 new 52-week highs and three new lows; the Nasdaq Composite was recording 53 new highs and 47 new lows.

(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Chris Reese)