[4:20 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Profit Taking Dominates, Brings AAPL Down
by Wes George
After climbing 1,000 points in 30 days, the Nasdaq rested. Next Tuesday and Wednesday is the all important Federal Open Market Committee meeting which could be a Caesar's thumb up or down on the bulls wrestling with the bears in the markets below. Meanwhile, Microsoft brazenly waltzed out a scheme to dominate the Internet in ten years or less. Apple's stock valiantly retained most of its recent gains.
The almost doubled trading volume in AAPL is due to the stock split yesterday which doubled the number of shares outstanding adding much needed liquidity to the stock. One Stock Watch reader e-mailed the Mac Observer to point out that the number of shares available on the market (liquidity) influences the investment decisions of large institutional funds. Even if a large investor admires a company's prospects if the liquidity is low they may choose to invest elsewhere, since low liquidity makes it difficult to buy and sell large blocks discreetly.
Apple gave back 1 7/8 or 3.37% to close at 53 3/4 on strong volume, even with the split taken into account, of 8.2 million shares.
The Nasdaq slid 127 points (-3.13%) to closed at the day's low of 3936 on volume of 1.6 billion shares. The Nasdaq, up 33% since May 24, is overdue a rest. The recently rebounding tech sectors -- biotech, chip and Internet stocks led the way down today.
The Dow fell 121 points (-1.16%) to close at the low for the month of 10376 on volume of over 1 billion shares. Many of the big cyclical and industrial stocks, such as Caterpillar (CAT) are trading at, or near, 52-week lows.
The S&P 500 dropped 26.95 points (-1.82%) to close at 1452.18.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio gave back some gains along with the markets.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai slid 7 11/16 to 107 11/16, after yesterday's 21 point surge on news that Bears and Stearns put a price target of $175 on the stock.
Adobe lost 7 5/16 to close at 121 1/2. Earthlink fell 23/32 to close at 15 1/4. Motorola dumped 1 5/16 to close at 33 1/2. IBM shed 2 15/16 to 111 9/16.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard lost 3/4 to close at 118 3/4. Gateway was up 1 1/8 to close at 61 bucks. Compaq gained 7/16 to close at 28 1/2.
Intel unveiled its entry into the Internet appliance market. A Forbes' article describes the device called Dot.Station: "The countertop device, which includes a built-in telephone, will be the first mass-market consumer product to carry the Intel brand. Until now, the giant chipmaker has only dabbled with digital video and home-networking devices, content for the most part with having 'Intel Inside' stickers on a majority of the world's personal computers." The most notable things about Intel's new Web device is that it runs a Linux operating system and is available only through service contracts with your Internet service provider. Intel shed 4 1/8 to close at 134 7/8.
Handspring (HAND), a handheld computer business started by the inventors of the Palm Pilot, had a strong initial public offering yesterday, ending the day up 35%. But today the stock suffered profit taking, down 1 5/8 to close at 25 5/16.
Microsoft announced a "universal canvas" for all PC users. Bill Gates imagines a future where the browser is the OS and software is stored on servers for rent by the minute. Every idea, every word, every note of copyrightable material will be charged to your online account. Cha-ching! Welcome to the information economy and thank you for shopping the Microsoft way. Shares of Microsoft were down 7/8 at 79 13/16.
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.
Apple
|
