[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Wall Street Quiet, AAPL Heads Back Down
by Wes George
And on the fifth day of the summer stock rally the markets rested. After last week's record gain of 19% for the Nasdaq the tech stocks certainly earned a break today. Apple's stock gave back some recent gains. The absence of any serious profit taking bodes well for our nascent summer rally.
This could be a week light on economic news. Jack Guynn, a Federal Reserve Bank President, said in a speech to a group of bankers, he believes the US is approaching a sustainable level of growth, but cautioned that inflation is a risk and the Fed will remain ever vigilance.
We can expect every clue as to whether the Federal Open Market Committee will vote for or against another interest rate hike on June 28th to capture the attention of Wall Street.
Apple's stock gave back 1 1/4 or 1.35%, to close at 91 5/16 on below average volume of 2.8 million shares trading hands.
The Nasdaq gained 8.39 points to closed at 3821 on volume of 1.4 billion shares traded. Biotechs and B2B Internet stocks surged while the semiconductor stocks were soft.
The Dow climbed 20 points to close at 10815 on light volume of 833 million shares. Defensive stocks continued to sell off today, drugs, regional banks and food chains were mostly down. But strength in tech stocks such as IBM and Hewlett Packard kept the Dow in positive territory.
The S&P 500 sagged 9.64 points (-0.65%) to close at 1467.62.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio gained on a boost from IBM and Akamai.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai gained 6 1/16 to close at 95 1/16. The content streaming company's stock is up more than 50% in the last 5 days. ARM Holdings gained 7/8 to close at 32 7/8. Adobe climbed 3 11/16 to close at 128 11/16. Earthlink rose a buck to close at 19 dollars. Macromedia soared 7 7/16 to 96 7/8. Motorola gained 1 1/8 to close at 37 15/16, reflecting last week's 3 for 1 stock split.
IBM gained 3 13/16 to 112 5/8 after announcing a new low-cost ThinkPad series aimed at consumers, starting at $1,199 -- sporting a 500-MHz Celeron and a 12-inch SVGA display. Later, a C-Net News article said IBM will demo a Transmeta processor in a ThinkPad at a trade show this year. Merrill Lynch said they are gaining confidence in IBM's stock to trade higher this year.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard surged 9 3/8 to close at 120 5/16. The stock price adjusted today for HP's Agilent Technologies (A) spin-off . Intel lost 1 5/8 to close at 132 9/16 on fears that AMD's new low end Duron processor might cut into marketshare. Gateway lost 2 7/8 to close at 51 7/8. Compaq gained a 1/4 to close at 26 7/8. Dell sagged 9/16 to 42 3/4.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) released a new Athlon processor with speeds ranging from 750 MHz to 1 GHz. The company said it is targeting the enterprise market with the new Athlons. The stock climbed 15/16 to 91 1/16
The final briefs in the Microsoft antitrust trial were filed today with the court suggesting remedies that still include dividing the company into two businesses, instead of three as an independent recommendation from Microsoft's rivals pushed for. Microsoft traded higher by 9/16 to 66 7/8.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect rolled out new e-business software design tools and training to help consolidate the company's grip on the Internet's future.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Government lawyers made it clear in the filings that the order to impose immediate restrictions on (Microsoft) should be implemented immediately, and the process of separating the company should begin as soon as possible. The government's plan, which was unveiled last month, came in response to findings by Judge Jackson earlier this year that the company repeatedly violated federal antitrust laws...Microsoft continues to deny the charges and will have one final opportunity to refute the government plan and proposed changes in a filing Wednesday."
The 30-year US Treasury bond climbed 15/32 to 104 21/32 in a The yield, which moves inversely to the price, dropped to 5.92%.
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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