What Apple’s first revenue decline in 13 years means for the stock market

Marketwatch reports:

Apple Inc.’s disappointing corporate results late Tuesday may be a bad omen for a skittish market fretting about the health of the U.S. and global economy.

Apple CEO Tim Cook pinned some of the blame for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s results on weakness in China and “strong macroeconomic” headwinds in a news release to partially explain why quarterly profits fell nearly 23% and revenue declined for the first time in 13 years.


Cook described the results as a “challenging quarter” during an interview with The Wall Street Journal after it reported corporate results after Tuesday’s close of trading.

Investors sent the company’s shares down as much as 8% in after hours trade, wiping out more than $40 billion of market cap, equivalent to nearly four times the value of Twitter Inc. which had a market cap of about $11 billion as of Tuesday’s close.

No word yet on whether Tim Cook will blame George W. Bush for Apple's problems.