Dow cracks 22,000, Apple rally leaves other tech behind

By Noel Randewich

(Reuters) - The Dow peaked above the 22,000 mark for the first time on Wednesday, powered by Apple's healthy quarterly iPhone sales, while weakness in other tech stocks pulled the Nasdaq and S&P 500 lower.

Apple jumped 4.90 percent to a record high after the world's largest publicly listed company reported strong results. It is up about 36 percent this year.

That helped push the Dow to a record high, although tech heavyweights Microsoft, Facebook and Alphabet all lost ground following recent strong gains that have made the sector the strongest performer in 2017.

Some investors believe corporations must start spending less on buying back shares and more on technology to improve productivity in order to justify further gains in Silicon Valley stocks, with the S&P 500 information already up 22 percent this year.

"Apple, at he heart of it, has a lot of consumer exposure, and the consumer is in great shape. But we would like to see some capex," said Mike Baele, managing director at U.S. Bank Private Client Wealth Management in Portland, Oregon.

Microsoft fell 0.77 percent and Facebook lost 0.60 percent, both among the heaviest drags on the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq.

The Dow has risen 11 percent in 2017 and in on track for its sixth straight record close, even as Wall Street loses confidence that President Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress will be able to cut taxes and increase infrastructure spending this year.

The Dow hit the 20,000 mark in late January and crossed the 21,000 mark in just over a month on March 1.

Two-thirds of S&P 500 companies have reported their second-quarter earnings so far and 72 percent of them have beaten Wall Street's expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In a typical quarter, 64 percent of companies beat expectations.

At 2:11 pm ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 38.47 points, or 0.18 percent, to 22,002.39 points.

The S&P 500 lost 0.10 percent to 2,473.75 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.15 percent to 6,353.36.

Data showed U.S. private employers added 178,000 jobs in July, after adding 191,000 jobs in June. Economists polled by Reuters expected an addition of 185,000 jobs. The data comes ahead of the more comprehensive non-farm payrolls report on Friday.

AutoNation fell 6.65 percent after the largest U.S. auto retail chain reported lower quarterly profits.

Cardinal Health fell 9.03 percent after the drug distributor's 2018 profit forecast missed analysts' estimate.

(Additional reporting by Tanya Agrawal; Editing by Arun Koyyur)