MacWorld Fever is catching as Apple's stock danced over 50 points today for much of the late afternoon's trading. Going as high as 50 3/4, Apple's stock fell to just below 50 literally at the last second. 50 has been a glass ceiling for Apple since the days when Michael Spindler spent time exploring his CEO navel while visiting the dark recesses under his desk *. Still Apple closed at a 6 year high of 49 7/8, a gain of 2 1/2 points on volume that is out of this world. 9,813,900 shares traded hands for the day with over 400,000 shares trading hands in the last 11 minutes of trading alone. Normal volume during the last 20 days has been around 2,000,000 shares. Today's close just edges out Apple's high of 49 9/16 achieved on May 3rd of this year. Our own Apple Trader has been following Apple's movements all day and had this to say:
It's possible that there is going to be a summer rally in the next week or two. A strong market rally combined with Apple's own strength as a value/growth stock and with the "reality distortion field" of MacWorld cranking up to full power could make for some interesting fireworks. Thousands of investors are standing on the sidelines to see the new P1 and new iMacs and whatever other surprises Apple has up its sleeve. Usually MacWorld ends up being a let down of investor's often way to high expectations. This time it may be different.
Last year the iMac was more or less released at MacWorld but everyone had already seen it and no one (but myself and a few other visionaries) realized that it was going to be a smashing consumer success. This year no one has seen the P1 yet and everyone knows that Apple can execute a really big homerun after management's stellar handling of the "Year of the iMac," So maybe, Apple will retain the MacWorld highs or set new ones based on the consumer portable's prospects. If so that will be a welcome change from past MacWorlds and I think that's what the top Apple echelon is trying to achieve with the Kremlin style security around Apple's future products.
If Apple doesn't bust through $50 this week that might just mean that Wall Street is mostly still on vacation. Next week is going to be the big one to watch.
If Apple can close above $50 then technical all hell should break loose and we could see $55 before MacWorld!
A general market rally helped most of Apple's PC competitors as well with IBM, Dell, Gateway 2000, and Compaq all closing up. Hewlett-Packard managed a loss.
The Dow closed at 11187.36, a gain of 52.24 and the Nasdaq closed at 2742.97, up 6.19.
The Mac Observer Spin: We think Wes is right and Apple could break the US$50 mark soon. At the same time, there could be a slight move towards profit taking with Apple being so high. Fun to watch, tomorrow should be interesting to say the least. While not broken, the glass ceiling is showing some major cracks.
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