[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Nasdaq Sells Off, Apple Declines
by Wes George
Ouch! It looks like investors were serious last week when they sold off their tech stocks. The Nasdaq after a near miraculous recovery from recent lows fell to its knees exhausted today, fortunately the volume was low. Paradoxically, the unusually strong earning season ahead for most quality tech stocks has enticed few buyers, so far.
Meanwhile, over on the Dow things looked a lot brighter. Investors disgusted with the Nasdaq volatility and hype continued to buy into the recently unfashionable value stocks of the old economy. The market technicians always claimed that the Nasdaq would have to retest last week lows and today was a big move in that direction.
Four big brokerage firms recommended to their clients to reduce exposure to the over valued tech stocks adding to the downward spiral on the Nasdaq.
Apple nose-dived 6 3/4 or 5.12%, to close at 125 dollars on unconvincing volume of 1.8 million shares trading hands.
Apple announced that it has acquired Astarte's DVD engineering team and their DVD authoring software products for an undisclosed sum today.
The Nasdaq gave back 258 points (-5.80%), to close at the day's low of 4188 on second lightest volume day of the year at 1.4 billion shares traded.
The Nasdaq set its last record high one month ago today at 5048. Not since September of last year has there been a 30-day period in which the Nasdaq refused to set a new record high.
Whether today's downdraft continues tomorrow may largely be determined by the earnings to be announced this evening, including Motorola (MOT), Advance Micro Devices (AMD), Rambus (RMBS), Gateway, (GTW), and Sun Microsystems (SUNW).
The Dow climbed 75 points (0.68%) to close at 11186 on the lightest volume of year at 854 million shares.
The S&P 500 lost 11.86 points (-0.78%) to close at 1504.49.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai shrugged off 12 3/8 to close at 133 5/16. ARM Holdings lost 18 dollars to close at 175. Adobe lost 7 13/16 to close at 117 3/16. Earthlink got hammered 1 13/16 to close at 16 dollars. Macromedia lost 5 15/16 to 75 dollars. IBM fell 15/16 to 122 3/16. Motorola lost 4 3/4 to close at 149 dollars. Motorola is expected to announce earnings of $0.58 per share this evening.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard slipped 8 3/4 to close at 147 1/4. Intel lost 5 11/16 dollars to close at 131 1/8. Gateway actually gained 1/4 to close at 56 3/4, the company is expected to post earnings of $0.41 this evening. Compaq slipped 1/2 to close at 29 3/8. Shares of Microsoft lost 3 bucks to 86 1/16.
In Economic News: Stayed tuned for March's Producer Prices and Retail Sales numbers on Thursday. Then on Friday the all important Consumer Price Index and Industrial Production Numbers for March are announced. Some Investors may sit on the sideline this week to see what this new data has to say about the direction of inflation in the hot US economy.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond gained 15/32 to 108 7/32. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, dropped to 5.68%, the lowest level in over 6 months.
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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