[4:20 PM] Apple Stock Watch: AAPL Breaks Out On 1st Day Of Split Adjusted Trading
by Wes George
What an exciting day for Apple's shareholders. The stock, after a surging Monday and Tuesday ahead of today's stock split, rocketed almost 10% on huge volume. While it's not unexpected to see Apple's stock climb higher ahead of Macworld, few expected AAPL to surge over 20% in the last three days. Who says stock splits don't help a stock's price, especially during a tech stock-picker's rally?
In retrospect, there are a number of news items that combined paint a very bullish outlook for Apple at a time when the stock is artificially depressed by conventional thinking about what a PC manufacturer's business strategy should be.
Today, it was revealed that Apple is one of the Janus Strategic Value Fund's top ten stock picks. Since the new mutual fund began operation in February they have invested 3% of their $3 billion dollar asset base in AAPL. Janus is one of the more respected mutual fund operations and apparently is influential with other investors as well.
Feeding the frenzied buying of AAPL today is the upcoming end to Apple's traditionally slow fiscal 3rd quarter. The most profitable seasons of the year lie ahead in the Apple cycle.
Apple jumped 5 bucks or 9.88% to close at 55 5/8 ($111 1/4) on volume of 8.7 million shares. Average volume for AAPL is 3.8 million shares traded each day. Were tons of people just waiting for the stock to split before they bought?
On June 13th an ON24 report made the ridiculous recommendation to short AAPL at $91. I'm now recommending that short traders cover their AAPL positions first thing in the morning. :-)
The Nasdaq climbed 50 points (1.26%) to closed at 4069 on volume of 1.5 billion shares. The tech rally continued amidst the increasing clamor of analysts calling for a strong summer rally that will be all about technology. Today's gains put the Nasdaq back to almost dead even where the year began, but the Nasdaq is up about 1000 points in the last month.
Technical analysts believe that this week's chart action points towards continuation of the tech rally into July. They're looking for 4,200 short term with a 4,500 target for the rally by mid summer.
Biotech stocks soared in anticipation of a Rose Garden announcement next week that the human genome map is essentially completed.
The Dow climbed 62 points (0.60%) to close at 10497 on volume of about 1 billion shares.
The S&P 500 rose 3.12 points (0.21%) to close at 1479.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio: Bear Stearns put a new price target on Akamai on $175 and the stock surged 21 3/8 to close at 115 3/8. Our 500 shares of AAPL also entered positive territory for the first time since May 8th.
In Apple related businesses: Adobe lost 2 7/16 to close at 128 13/16. Earthlink fell 9/32 to close at 15 31/32. Motorola gained 3/16 to close at 34 11/16. IBM shed 1 7/8 to 114 1/2.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard gained 3 1/4 to close at 119 3/4. Gateway lost 9/16 to close at 59 7/8. Compaq gained 11/16 to close at 28 1/16. Intel climbed 11/16 to close at 139 dollars.
Shares of Microsoft soared after Judge Jackson stayed his ruling while the appeals process drags on. Shares of MSFT rose 5 3/4 to 90 11/16.
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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