[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Pre-MACWORLD Excitement Drives Apple's Stock Higher
by Wes George
Wow, what a day! This July's MACWORLD hype seems to be spilling over onto Wall Street. Apple's stock climbed almost 5.0% today on hype, a little news, an important Wall Street Journal article, and head line busting rumors. All this on day which was unkind to most tech stocks.
A C-Net News.com article says that Merrill Lynch anticipates a strong second half of the year for all PC stocks. Merrill Lynch analyst Steve Fortuna told C-Net that, "Investors should not be overly focused on seasonably week second-quarter results, but rather be building positions in the PC names in anticipation of a very strong second-half year." Mr. Fortuna also remarked, ""With respect to Apple, we think there is an attractive short-term opportunity here leading up to the July 19 Macworld event in New York."
On Sunday the Drudge report had a "World Exclusive" on the latest Apple/Pixar/Disney merger rumor. SEC ought to check into the suspicious coincidence of this old urban legend's recent outbreak, which is timed perfectly to pump up AAPL exactly when the MACWORLD hype is turned to maximum.
Apple released details on how to view Steve Job's keynote address remotely on July 19 (Wed.) 9 am EST.
Apple jumped out of the gate and climbed higher against the tide all day by 2 11/16 to close at 57 1/8 on nearly twice normal volume of 7.1 million shares. Imagine what AAPL would have done today if the Nasdaq had been in rally mode.
Today's closing price was the highest since May 3rd and reconfirmed AAPL's healthy uptrend which started after hitting a closing low of 42 dollars on May 31st.
The Wall Street Journal's favorable analysis of Apple's retail strategy on Friday boosted AAPL early in the morning. Of course, it's difficult to know how much of today's gain is due to short-term speculators following Mr. Fortuna's advice and/or trading on the Disney merger rumor.
The Nasdaq fell 42 points (-1.06%) to closed at 3980 on light volume of 1.3 billion shares
The Dow climbed 11 points (0.11%) to close at 10647 on light volume of 819 million shares. The earnings parade began in earnest today with blue chip giant Alcoa (AA) beating the street's expectation and helping boost the optimism on Wall Street.
The S&P 500 dropped 3.23 points (-0.22%) to close at 1475.67.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai gained 1 1/8 to 114 7/8. Adobe traded down by 2 dollars to 135 3/8. Earthlink fell 3/4 to close at 13 13/16 in what was a bad day for most Internet related stocks. IBM shed 1 13/16 to 103 1/4.
Motorola fell 9/16 to close at 32 9/16 but late in the day a news report claimed that analysts believe MOT will later this week "report its 2000 second-quarter profits nearly doubled from a year ago amid improved handset unit sales."
Motorola also announced that it has 10 new digital cellular network expansion contracts almost settled with China Unicom Ltd. According to Reuters, "Under the terms of the contracts, Motorola will expand China Unicom's GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) 900 megahertz networks in eight of China's major provinces, serving a population of 421 million people. GSM is a standard digital cellular phone service."
Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard slid 1 1/16 to close at 123 11/16. Gateway was up 3 7/8 to close at 65 3/8. Compaq fell 1/16 to 26 dollars. Shares of Microsoft dived 2 9/16 to 79 7/16. Intel lost 1 3/8 to close at 137 15/16.
The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio climbed higher today on Apple's strong uptrend.
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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