"Apple is biggest superstar stock to collapse."
That was the headline, accompanied by a stock fever chart of the "past few months," of a Matt Krantz story Friday in USA Today
Apple
Dow
Boeing
Caterpillar
Intel
Microsoft
IBM
New York Times
Take Some Deep Breaths, and Don’t Do a Thing
.
If Krantz had stepped back a little—to the past few years, say— it would have spoiled his story, because despite this week's 8.8% drop, has vastly outperformed the .
This week, as you've probably heard, Mr. Market freaked out about China, a country whose growth many Dow components, including Apple, were counting on to buoy their growth.
I can see the likes of , , and suffering from a slowdown in China.
But Apple—with the iPhone 6/6+ still selling briskly in Beijing, with its successor rolling off the assembly line, with new stores opening across the country, with Apple Pay and streaming music and and maybe, someday, a car—with all that, Apple ought to have less to fear in China, not more.
Which made last week a great week for Apple to be snapping up its own shares in the open market.
Of the $140 billion—repeat billion—Apple's board of directors has earmarked for stock buybacks, the company had spent $90 billion as of last quarter.
That left $50 billion for weeks just like this.
UPDATE: If you're new to all this and you're as freaked out as Mr. Market, I recommend Ron Lieberaug's advice in Saturday's :
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple (AAPL) coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed.
