By the time Animal Planet arrived to help us bid goodbye to January in equities bulls easily bested bears on the month. (Even if markets are suddenly acting more like March in like lions and out like lambs for the Dow (^DJI) is now down for two straight days.)   Ironically even as the S&P 500 Index (^GSPC) posted its best start to a year since 1997 previously invincible Apple Inc. (AAPL) was its poorest performing component over the period. 1997 was of course was when Apple was rescued from bankruptcy by Microsoft (MSFT) but the Cupertino company appears to be aging a ...