[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Apple Climbs Higher on the Last Day of the Quarter
by Wes George
The day started as a slow summer Friday ahead of the Fourth of July. Tech stocks drifted higher and the Dow sagged. AAPL climbed 2 dollars by midday as investors realized Compaq's pains are not Apple's, but gave some back towards the close. Then, in the last half hour, volume surged as institutional investors closed the books on the second quarter of 2000.
The Wall Street Journal summed things up this way: "Repositioning for the end of the quarter and the rebalancing of the Russell 2000 Index were expected to inflate volume Friday ahead of what for many will be a four-day weekend. The U.S. market holds an abbreviated session Monday, but many on Wall Street were expected to take to the sidelines ahead of the Fourth of July holiday Tuesday in the U.S."
Some interesting statistics: Mutual funds saw a substantial net outflow of capital especially from aggressive big cap growth funds and small-cap funds in the last week. This is continuation of a trend that began in May when investors allocated only $16.94 billion to all stock funds, compared to April's inflows of $34.02 billion.
Meanwhile, the US Commerce Department reported Friday that personal income grew faster than expected in May pulling the personal saving rate up to its highest level since January.
Apple jumped 1 1/8 or 2.20% to close at 52 3/8 on good volume of 5.4 million shares.
The news around Apple was bright today. A CNET.News.com article reports, "Microsoft has christened new email software for the next version of its Macintosh Office 2001 software suite with the name "Entourage."...The program allows a message to be edited in Word, can track the last 150 messages, and can link to other data, such as contacts, email, tasks and documents. The new address book features color-coded categories and access to contacts from any Office application."
This comes on yesterday's latest reiteration of the iMac upgrade rumor -- this time in the mainstream technology press. Reports are that Apple " is apparently clearing out inventories of iMacs and encouraging dealers to get rid of stock on hand, a sign that new models are on the way. More special iMac bundles are being advertised than in the past. Prices have also dropped in certain locations."
The Nasdaq climbed 88 points (2.29%) to closed at 3966 on volume of 1.69 billion shares
The Dow jumped 49 points (0.48%) to close at 10447 on volume of 1.3 billion shares. All of the Dow's gains today came in the last 15 minutes.
The S&P 500 climbed 12.26 points (0.85%) to close at 1454.65.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai climbed 9 1/2 to 118 3/4. Adobe traded up 5 13/16 to close at 116. Earthlink climbed 9/16 to 15 7/16. Motorola lost 3/16 to 29 1/8. IBM shed a 4 7/16 to 109 9/16.
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard gained 4 5/8 to close at 124 3/8. Gateway was up 1 5/16 to 57 dollars. Compaq fell 1/8 to close at 25 9/16. Shares of Microsoft were higher by 2 13/16 at 80 dollars. Intel climbed 1 15/16 to close at 133 11/16.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio was mixed, Apple and Akamai were strong, but weakness plagued IBM this week after Merill Lynch cut top line growth estimates for IBM to 1% from 3% for this quarter. |
