[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: AOL Swallows Time Warner, Wall Street Cheers, Apple Falls
by Wes George
Falling bond prices mean higher yields and that helped cool the heels of investors pumped up on the adrenaline from the AOL Time Warner merger. The real news is the earnings announcement season and the release of another round of economic data that promises to keep Wall Street highly volatile for the next few weeks.
Apple declined 5 dollars or 5.12% to close at 92 3/4. The volume of shares traded was a moderate 3.9 million. AAPL broke through price support level at 95 dollars today and is heading for the next lower strong support region in the 91 dollar range. Expect AAPL to test this support zone and then move higher in anticipation of next week's record earnings announcement on Wednesday, January 19th, after the bell.
The Nasdaq gave back 127 points (3.14%), after yesterday's record 167 point gain, to close at 4922 on a heavy volume of 1.6 billion shares.
The Dow lost 61 points (0.53%) to close at 11511, a billion shares traded.
The S&P 500 lost 18.93 points (1.30%) to close at 1438.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond lost 30/32 to close at 93 dollars, while the yield rose to 6.66% from 6.59% on Monday.
In Apple related businesses, Adobe gave back 4 5/8 to close at 62 5/8. Symantec lost 4 5/8 to close at 52 1/8. Akamai was down 7 1/16 to close at 278 7/16, while ARM Holdings dived 9 dollars to close at 180. Macromedia lost 1 9/16 to end at 76 21/32.
Apple's Power PC partners: Motorola gave back 6 1/2 to close at 133 3/8. IBM stock's was a rare gainer, up 3/4 to close at 118 3/4. IBM was issued a record 2,756 US patents on new semiconductor and Internet technologies in 1999. Yesterday, IBM announced plans to place a substantial financial investment into developing software for the Linux operating system.
Apple's competitors: Dell lost 1 5/16 to end at 42 13/16. Gateway lost 3 7/8 to close at 60 1/4. Compaq gained a buck to close at 28 1/4. Hewlett Packard, down 2 11/16 to close at 108 3/8.
Intel surged ahead 3 15/16, after yesterday's 3 3/4 gain, to close at 89 11/16 . Credit Suisse First Boston, upgraded the company to "strong buy" after Robertson Stephens raise their recommendation from "long term attractive" to "buy". Intel investors eagerly await an earnings announcement on Thursday from the chipmaker.
Microsoft settled out of court an antitrust lawsuit brought by Caldera Inc. in 1996 with an undisclosed settlement. However, Microsoft said it expected to take a $0.03 per share charge for the settlement in the 3rd fiscal quarter ending March 31st. Shares of MSFT fell 2 7/8 to close at 109 3/8.
In other market news: Stay tuned for market volatility as important economic data is released later this week. Producer prices (PPI) for December and retail sales data are revealed on Thursday morning, while consumer prices (CPI) are released on Friday morning along with new consumer sentiment data. To top it off Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, is expected to make a speech on Thursday evening about technology and the economy. It might be worth skipping the Simpsons for.
Time Warner (TWX), gave back 7 1/8 after yesterday's 25 3/4 gain, to end at 85 1/8. America Online (AOL), lost another 7 7/8, after slipping 2 3/4 yesterday, to end at 64 3/4.
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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