Stocks fell to further 12-year lows on Friday as a bearish brokerage view on Apple Inc prompted a sell-off in technology shares and overhanging fears about the banking system's future weighed.

A 6 percent slide in Apple shares helped drag the Nasdaq to a 6-year intraday low, while the broad S&P 500 was on track for its worst week since October.

Banks were among the top drags, with JPMorgan down 6.5 percent at $15.53 and Goldman Sachs off 7.9 percent at $75.30. The S&P financial index <.GSPF> fell 4.2 percent.

JPMorgan cut its price target and profit views on Apple, driving shares of the iPod and iPhone maker down 6.1 percent to $83.44.

The Nasdaq did break finally the November low, so I think we have some follow-through on that, said Marc Pado, U.S. market strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald & Co. in San Francisco.

As far as the financials, all these things that have been talked about are moving in the right direction ... in order to move forward, we need Geithner to come out and tell us the answer to the question: 'How do you value the assets?'

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> fell 109.20 points, or 1.65 percent, to 6,484.13. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> shed 14.76 points, or 2.16 percent, to 667.79. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> lost 28.57 points, or 2.20 percent, to 1,271.02.

Bleak economic news added to the negative tone after a government report showed the U.S. unemployment rate rose last month to 8.1 percent, its highest since December 1983, as 651,000 jobs were cut.

The gloomy jobs picture is disconcerting news both for companies and for consumers, whose spending drives corporate profits. The S&P retailers index <.RLX> fell 3.1 percent while Wal-Mart fell 2.4 percent to $48.57.

Shares of cell-phone chip and technology supplier Qualcomm slid 5.3 percent to $32.78, making it the second-worst drag on the Nasdaq 100 <.NDX> behind Apple.

Shares of car maker and Dow component General Motors plunged 21.5 percent to $1.46 a day after auditors raised doubts about the company's viability. Earlier in the session, GM touched an intraday low of $1.27. GM has lost more than 90 percent of its market value in the past 52 weeks.

Energy shares offered some support as the price of oil rose 2.3 percent, or 99 cents, to $44.60 a barrel on expectations that OPEC could again reduce output. Chevron rose 1.1 percent to $57.06.

Shares of Dow Chemical jumped 7.3 percent to $6.94 and Rohm and Haas climbed 17.5 percent to $63.44 after the companies confirmed discussions are under way about their troubled merger. Dow Chemical agreed last July to buy Rohm for $78 a share, but then pulled out of the deal.

In other M&A activity, Roche Holding AG raised its offer to buy out the minority shareholders of Genentech Inc to $93 a share from $86.50, driving the U.S. biotech company's stock up 10.3 percent to $90.01.

(Editing by Jan Paschal)

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