Apple Keeps a Lid on Market Gains

It's not a bad day for stocks overall, but the largesse of Apple has the company dragging markets down. At 3:15 p.m. EST, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained a mere 0.21% on a day when little news hit the market. However, other indexes haven't been so lucky. The S&P 500 is flat, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 0.2% after Apple's shares fell 3.3% on rumors of production cuts. Apple's market cap of $475 billion weighs more heavily on these two indexes than other companies, because both indexes are weighted based on market cap.

Hewlett-Packard is a big winner on the Dow today, climbing 5.3% near the end of trading. The stock rose this morning because of a new research report from Infiniti Research pointing to strong growth in enterprise networking equipment for the next three years, but shares really popped at 2 p.m. EST on a report from Bloomberg that Dell is in talks to go private. Both Dell and HP are big personal-computer makers, and Dell's going private would give investors a little confidence that the space is strong enough to buy into for the long term.

Boeing is up 1.9% today as it regains the losses it suffered last week, when two incidents took place aboard Japan Airlines-owned aircraft. The sell-off was fast and based on sparse information about the incidents, but it appears there's no reason to worry about the 787 Dreamliner. Now that details are starting to emerge, the problems seem a lot less serious than investors had initially worried, and the stock is rallying as a result.

These two big gainers weren't able to mitigate Apple's losses and pull indexes higher. But given today's big sell-off, now is as good a time as any to give Apple a closer look. There is a debate raging as to whether Apple remains a buy, and The Motley Fool's senior technology analyst, Eric Bleeker, is prepared to fill you in on reasons both to buy to sell Apple, as well as what opportunities remain for the company (and your portfolio) going forward. To get instant access to his latest thoughts on Apple, simply click here now.

The article Apple Keeps a Lid on Market Gains originally appeared on Fool.com.

Travis Hoium manages an account that owns shares of Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Apple. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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