[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Stock Market Train Wreck Upsets The Apple Cart Too
by Wes George
Jeez, what a train wreck. The Dow sunk like a rock from the get go, but the Nasdaq looked like it might climb higher until the Nasdaq Composite quote crashed and buyers decided to take the snowy New York Friday afternoon off early. Apple's stock slid lower in the across the board weakness.
The stock markets are closed in observance of Washington's birthday on Monday.
Aside from the snow storm, option expirations, the Nasdaq quote crash (which was back on line by mid afternoon) and the long weekend, Wall Street seems to have a grim view of Alan Greenspan's testimony yesterday before the Senate Banking committee. Mr. Greenspan is committed to slowing down the economy and the stock market, whatever it takes.
Economist Bruce Steinberg, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal: "We expect the Fed to tighten at the next two meetings ... and hope that will be enough. But the risk is that the Fed will end up tightening three or four more times this year."
Apple lost 3 5/8 or 3.16% to close at 111 1/4 on 2 million shares traded.
The Nasdaq wilted 136 points (3.01%) to close at 4412 for its 7th biggest decline ever and on the 4th largest volume at 1.89 billion shares traded.
The Dow collapsed 295 points (2.81%) to close at 10219.
The S&P 500 lost 42.18 (3.04%) to close at 1346.07.
In Apple related businesses: Adobe was down 3 5/16 to close at 98 1/2. Akamai slid 10 3/8 to close at 241 5/8. ARM Holdings lost 5 1/8 to close at 210 5/8. Motorola lost 2 1/8 to close at 145 1/8. IBM lost 4 1/4 to close at 112 1/2 dollars. Shares of Earthlink (ELNKD) lost 2 1/8 to close at 19 13/16. Macromedia gave back 3 dollars to 70 5/8.
Apple's competitors: Compaq lost a dollar to close at 25 1/4. Intel slid 4 5/8 to close at 105 3/8. Gateway gained 1/8 to 56 1/2. Dell lost 5/8 to 40 dollars. Hewlett Packard gained 1 1/4 to close at 129 1/4. Shares of Microsoft slid 4 9/16 dollars to close at 95 dollars.
In other news: The consumer price index for January was slightly higher by 0.2%, the same growth rate as the last three months and lower than economists had expected.
The Wall Street Journal reported, "The Federal Reserve Board has formally played down the usefulness of the CPI as an indicator of inflationary pressures. It said Thursday that the inflation projections contained in its economic outlook are no longer based on the CPI, which it regards as "upwardly biased." Instead, the central bank will focus on the chain-weighted price index for personal consumption expenditures, a measure that grew 2.5% in the fourth quarter and 1.8% in the third quarter."
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond traded up 28/32 to 101 7/32 as investors fled the stock market for the safety of bonds. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, dropped to 6.16% from Thursday's 6.22%.
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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