[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Apple Drops, Stays Over 100, Just Barely
by Wes George
It was a mixed day for stocks as the market struggled to find direction in low volume. Late in the day tech stocks found direction to the downside and dragged AAPL, as high as $105 earlier, down with them.
Considering the stock markets have seen six rate increases totaling 175 basis points since June of 1999 with the biggest increase in five years just this week, stocks are holding up as well as can be expected.
A stronger than expected drop in the number of new jobless claims last week set the market off on weak footing this morning.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Economists say the US job market, now tighter than it has been in three decades, shows little sign of slackening. The economy created 340,000 new jobs in April, pushing the unemployment rate to a 30-year low of 3.9%. The dwindling pool of available workers provides an inflationary worry to policy makers at the Federal Reserve."
Apple gave back 5/8 or -0.62% to close at 100 3/4 on volume of 3.2 million shares traded.
The Nasdaq fell 106 points (-2.91%), to closed near the day's low of 3538 on anemic volume of 1.2 billion shares.
The Dow climbed 7.54 points (0.07%) to close at 10777 on very light volume of 808 million shares. Financial stocks pushed the Dow higher in the morning but dwindled in the afternoon.
The S&P 500 lost 10.59 points (-0.73%) to close at 1437.21.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio slipped down with Apple and Lucent.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai lost 1 1/16 to close at 115 3/4. ARM Holdings lost 1 1/4 to close at 29 dollars. Adobe traded down 4 9/16 to close at 115 3/4. Earthlink dived 1 1/2 to close at 19 15/16. Motorola 1 7/16 to close at 93 9/16. IBM slid 1 1/2 to 106 3/8.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard climbed 1 9/16 to close at 131 5/8. Intel gained 13/16 to close at 124 dollars. Gateway dipped 1 7/16 to close at 50 5/16.
"Compaq unveils $999 fully featured Internet notebook PC for consumers.", reads the company press release. Compaq slipped 3/4 to close at 27 7/8.
Shares of Microsoft fell 1 1/2 to 66 3/16 after the DOJ demolished the company's suggested list of remedies in the ongoing antitrust trial. The government labeled the suggestion neither 'serious" or "sensible".
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond fell 10/32 to 100 8/32. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, climbed to 6.23%.
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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