NEW YORK — Forget Facebook. This is still Apple’s stock market.
Apple — the world’s most valuable company — climbed nearly 6 percent Monday, helping propel major U.S. stock indexes to gains after a solid week of losses. The Standard & Poor’s 500, where Apple accounts for 4 percent of the index, enjoyed its best day in nearly five weeks. The Nasdaq composite index, where Apple accounts for 12 percent, notched its biggest gain of the year.
And it was no thanks to Facebook. The social-networking giant, on its second day as a public company, plunged nearly 11 percent even as the rest of the market rallied.
Investors also may have been spooked by technical glitches that marred trading right after Facebook opened. But again, those issues appeared to have cleared up by Monday.
Apple also is no stranger to fickle investors. Its stock soared 57 percent from the end of last year through April 9, climbing to more than $636 from $405 as iPhone sales seemed unstoppable. But Monday’s gain of $30.90 to $561.28 — its second-biggest climb of the year — came after several analysts said they expect iPhone business to continue to do well.
The benchmark Dow Jones industrial average rose 135.10 points, or 1.1 percent, to 12,504.48. The S&P 500 rose 20.77 points to 1,315.99, and the Nasdaq jumped 68.42 to 2,847.21. That was welcome relief after a month on Wall Street that has been crippled by Greece, which failed to elect a new government two weeks ago and is rumored to be close to leaving the eurozone.
Investors desperate for good news latched on to weekend statements from China’s Premier Wen Jiabao, who promised to boost the country’s growth, a shift from previous rhetoric that focused mainly on curbing inflation.
The drumbeat of bad news about Europe continued, but Apple helped investors shrug it off.
The weekend’s Group of Eight meeting of world leaders brought only an ambiguous conclusion, producing promises to pursue growth in Europe but little in the way of concrete plans for how to do so.
“I wish I could say the coast is clear,” said Katherine Nixon, chief investment officer for Northern Trust’s personal-financial-services unit in Chicago. But “the G8 didn’t really solve anything.”
Major stock indexes in France and Germany rose, but Greece and Spain fell.
