The iPhone 5 launch on Wednesday, Sept. 12, is sure to be the most important event for tech investors this year. The Motley Fool will be hosting a live chat where our top tech analysts will answer your questions and break down what the announcement means for Apple and tech investors everywhere. Be sure to swing by Fool.com at 12:45 p.m. ET this Wednesday for all your coverage of Apple's next big announcement.

The market was down a bit today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDEX: ^DJI) was down 0.4%, the S&P 500 (INDEX: ^GSPC) 0.6%, and the Nasdaq (INDEX: ^IXIC) 1%. With that as context, let's look at the stocks everybody was talking about.

Apple shares fell 2.6% today to $662.74, a price not seen since ... Friday. Gasp! In all seriousness, there wasn't any big news today for Apple other than the anticipation of its big day coming up on Wednesday. Apple's expected to announce its iPhone 5 in all its glory then.

To bone up on its release, check out some of our coverage:

Looking at the Dow, the big loser was Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), down 3.8%. The reason for the drop is probably Intel's lowered sales guidance at the end of last week. On Friday, Intel stated:

"Intel Corporation today announced that third-quarter revenue is expected to be below the company's previous outlook as a result of weaker than expected demand in a challenging macroeconomic environment. The company now expects third-quarter revenue to be $13.2 billion, plus or minus $300 million, compared to the previous expectation of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion."   

That's about an 8% drop in sales expectations. Reasons for the dour expectations include inventory reductions by customers, "softnesss in the enterprise PC market segment," and weakness in emerging markets.

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard shares were actually up slightly (0.8%) after it announced more job cuts -- 2,000 more than the previous 27,000 it was planning to cut from May of this year to October 2014.

In the financial sector, the U.S. Treasury is taking its bailout stake in AIG down significantly. It plans to sell $18 billion worth of AIG stock, which would make the U.S. a minority shareholder. Shares of AIG fell 2%, probably because of expected selling pressure as the government executes the trades. Don't be fooled by the negative market response, though. This is good news for AIG.

And then we have Facebook coattail rider Zynga (Nasdaq: ZNGA). The social-games maker lost another executive to resignation, this time its chief marketing officer. It's more bad news for a company that's seen its stock fall 70% year to date.

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