Closing Bell: Techs decide to participate with St. Patrick's Day in rally (AA, AAPL, CSCO, DELL, DD, GS, TGT)

Alcoa Inc. (NYSE: AA) fell on many fronts. The company is slashing its dividend, cutting capital expenditure, and it can't really make money at existing aluminum price levels. Maybe we need to call it "aluminium" as it was supposed to be. Shares were down almost 9% to $5.56 shortly before the close.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) rose today on excitement about the new Apple OS for iPhone and the apps store now offering 1,000 new applications for the iPhone. Shares were up over 3% to $98.37 before the close.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) may have finally won on its unified computing model after all. Goldman Sachs raised its rating to the CONVICTION BUY LIST and gave it an $18.00 target. Shares were up over 3% to $15.96 shortly before the close.

Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) was one of the tech winners after the company introduced a super-thin notebook for prices starting at $2,000.00 and higher. Shares were up over 4% to $9.27 shortly before the close.

DuPont, or EI DuPont de Nemours & Co. (NYSE: DD), is continuing to expand its solar operations. DuPont says that it expects to nearly triple its annual photovoltaic sales to more than $1 billion in 2012. Shares were up almost 1% at $20.45 shortly before the close.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) rose after Meredith Whitney's replacement at Oppenheimer gave the company an "Outperform" rating in new much more optimistic coverage. Unfortunately, Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a bank and finance boutique firm, downgraded the stock. Shares were up almost 4% at $97.62 shortly before the close.

Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT) is now a proxy target of activist retail investor Bill Ackman in a bid to replace five directors. Ackman will himself vie for one of the seats up for election at the next annual meeting. Target said it was "disappointed after it... held discussions with Ackman." Shares were up almost 5% at $30.26 after the close.