[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Slow Monday In The Markets, But AAPL Rises on Momentum
by Wes George
The markets couldn't make much headway in chopping trading as investors played it cautious while Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned the US Congress of the long-term dangers of not maintaining a balanced budget. Nevertheless, Apple's momentum continued to wobble the price per share higher.
The nervousness on the Dow was in part due to OPEC's meeting in Vienna, Austria, to decide whether the oil producing nations will raise production levels enough to ease the upward pressure on world fuel prices. The first day of the OPEC meeting ended with no announcements. Jim Placke of Cambridge Energy Research Association, said on CNBC that if OPEC doesn't increase production at least 1.5 million barrels per day, higher oil prices are likely through out the summer.
Apple gained 7/8 or 0.63%, to close at 139 9/16 on volume of 2.4 million shares. As has become the norm, AAPL traded in a volatile price range from a low of 136 7/8 to a high of 144 3/4.
The Nasdaq lost 5 points (-0.10%) to close at 4958 on a volume of 1.3 billion shares traded for the lowest volume day of 2000.
The Dow fell 87 points (-0.78) to close at 11025 on a mere 880 million shares. Interestingly, a number of conservative tech stocks on the NYSE are close to new highs, such as IBM and AT&T. Profit takers invaded the financial stocks today.
The S&P 500 gave back 3.67 points (-0.24) to close at 1523.79.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai lost 2 5/16 to close at 208 11/16. ARM Holding gained 7 3/4 to close at 194 dollars. Earthlink lost 5/16 to close at 21 5/16. Macromedia gained 3 1/4 to 89 1/2. Motorola lost 1/4 to close at 163 5/16 dollars.
Adobe climbed 5 7/16 to close at 113 5/8 dollars after announcing a deal with Amazon to broaden the availability of ebooks to Macintosh users.
IBM soared to an intraday high of 128 dollars on a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter upgrade from neutral to outperform. IBM ended 6 dollars higher at 126 9/16. IBM is all over the news lately, including a huge deal with Qwest to build "cybercenters" to provide hosting services for corporations, and this intriguing announcement as reported by CNET news.com, "IBM has quietly discontinued its Workpad Z50, a subnotebook-like device running a version of Windows CE. With the Workpad Z50 gone, IBM effectively has dropped out of the Windows CE camp, at least for now. Currently, the only Workpads that IBM sells contain the Palm operating system, and the company is trying to promote these heavily to corporate buyers."
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard climbed 3 13/16 to close at 146 3/16. Dell gained 1 7/16 to close at 57 7/8. Intel gained 3 5/8 to close at 142 11/16. Gateway continued south, down 7/16 to close at 55 13/16. Compaq gained 7/16 to close at 29 3/16. Shares of Microsoft slipped 7 5/8 to 104 1/16 on the news that the company's settlement offer to the Justice Department isn't going to cut it.
In Economic News: Existing home sales rose 6.7% in February in the face of rising mortgage rates, however sales are still 7.6% below February, 1999.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "evidence is emerging that consumers may be pulling back from the housing market. Economists at Warburg Dillon Read said the Mortgage Bankers Association's mortgage applications index, a good indicator of home-buying activity in the next year, may have peaked in February 1999. The National Association of Home Builders monthly index also points to slower growth -- that measure declined in March to its lowest level in more than two years."
Look forward to the consumer confidence data for March tomorrow. On Wednesday the Gross Domestic Product number is released in the morning. Then on Friday expect personal income, personal spending, the Chicago PDI and factory orders for February to make news for the markets.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond rose 7/32 to 103 24/32. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, dropped to 5.99% from 6.00% on Friday.
For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. We also have many of these same quotes reported live (20 minute delay) on our home page. For other stories regarding Apple's stock activity, visit our Apple Stock Watch Special Report.
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