The Dow Jones Industrial Average's Apple (AAPL) fell 21 points today, bringing the rest of the market down with it.
Admit it, don't you feel that Apple changed the entire direction of a market that was trying to rally despite Dupont's (DD) dastardly report?
I think that the decline today felt as forced as the advance was yesterday, meaning that there was so much selling pressure that it seems a little absurd. We are resetting earnings estimates by the minute now.
After all, the decline in oil took everything down today -- everything -- even as many of the companies that got hammered have been bellyaching about, you get it, oil. We had some big, consumer, uber-discretionary companies do well: Coach (COH), Whirlpool (WHR), and Harley-Davidson HOG. And we had two stocks, Google (GOOG) in tech and Ross Stores (ROST), that had led us down in retail, actually rally.
I know it was a hideous day. But if the market hadn't rallied yesterday at 3:30 p.m., I think you would have said, "OK, I get it, Dupont and 3M (MMM) were weak and Apple's giving up what it has got." With the benign big-cap earnings tomorrow, if oil is down again, the transports won't be the only stocks that rally.
