[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Apple's Stock Closes At All Time High
by Wes George
Tomorrow the keynote address by Steve Jobs is the focus at MACWORLD Tokyo 2000 and AAPL is set to take off to new high ground if Steve announces any new products. Meanwhile, the tech rally on the Nasdaq sputtered out today losing altitude before reversing course and heading slightly higher.
Apple closed at a record all time high. (Note: the 121 1/2 Apple hit intraday on January 20th doesn't count in technical analysis. Apple's stock closed that day at $113 1/2). Apple's previous high close was 117 13/16 on December 7th last year.
Apple climbed 3 3/16 or 2.75% to close at 119 dollars on 4.2 million shares traded. That's much higher volume than we've seen recently. In spite of the tech stock downdraft no one in the know wants to be left without their share of Apple stock ahead of tomorrow's keynote.
The Nasdaq clawed it's way back for a 1.77 point gain to close at 4420 after dipping as low as 4294. Volume was 1.7 billion shares. Chips stocks and the PC vendors were strong today.
The Dow gained 198 points (1.88%) to close at 10718 with a billion shares traded as investors continued to seek bargains among the beaten down industrial stocks. Oil prices broke above the dreaded $30-a-barrel level yesterday for the first time since 1991.
The S&P 500 rose 12.09 (0.87%) to close at 1402.03.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai lost 7 7/8 to close at 222 1/2. ARM Holdings gave back 4 1/2 to close at 211 1/2 dollars. Motorola gained 11/16 to close at 147 15/16. Adobe slipped 1 1/16 to close at 88 9/16. IBM gained 1 1/8 to close at 117 3/16. Shares of Earthlink (ELNKD) traded down 1/4 to close at 21 15/16. Macromedia gave back 2 1/8 to 63 3/8 dollars.
Apple's competitors: Compaq gained 1 13/16 to close at 26 1/2. Intel gained 2 1/8 to close at 112 dollars, a new high. Gateway bounced back 2 1/2 to 56 15/16. Hewlett Packard gained 1 3/16 to close at 124 3/16. Dell gained 1 7/16 to 37 7/8.
The big launch of Win2000 is scheduled for this Thursday. Microsoft supporters are hoping the hoopla will match the thrill generated by the release of Win95. Shares of Microsoft slipped 1 1/16 to close at 98 9/16.
In other news: Industrial production in the US climbed a higher than expected 1% last month after a 0.4% surge in December. Industrial production was up 5.5% in 1999. Factory operating capacity, a key measure of inflation rose to 81.5% in January from 81.1% in December.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Generally, an operating capacity of 84% would alarm economists, indicating that factories just can't produce fast enough -- which could lead to price increases. Both January's industrial output and operating capacity were the highest since August 1998, when output rose by 1.8% and capacity stood at 81.9%."
Much of January's boost in Industrial productions has to do increased electricity production at utilities stimulated by the cold winter weather on the East Coast. Still the trend
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond traded down by 4/32 to 100 2/32. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, rose to 6.248% from Monday's 6.22%.
In the week ahead: On Thursday, Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, delivers his semiannual Humphrey-Hawkins testimony before the House Banking Committee while the producer price index for January is released in the morning. On Friday the all important inflation indicator, the consumer price index for January is released by the US Labor Department.
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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