[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Tech Stock Retreat, Apple Follows Suit And Closes Lower
by Wes George
Computer hardware stocks got hammered across the board as investors absorbed the new PC market share data and Compaq's less than stellar earnings report. Apple's stock held out, supported by yesterday's report that the iBook captured the top slot in the US Laptop market, but finally had to give in to the tech downdraft late in the day.
Apple gave back 2 1/16 (1.84%) to close at 110 3/16 on low trading volume of 3.3 million shares. Fletcher and Faraday reiterated their buy rating on Apple saying, "We are continuing coverage with a BUY rating. The company reported selling 1,350,000 Macs in the quarter, which works out to one Mac every six seconds."
The Nasdaq lost 97 points (2.33%) to close at 4070 with 1.7 billion shared traded. The Goldman Sachs Computer Hardware Index ($GHA) was down by 4.23%. Qualcomm (QCOM), the poster child of momentum stocks, was off 16% dragging down the spirits of most tech stocks with it.
The Dow rose 3 points (0.03%) to close at 11032, on volume of 1.1 billion shares traded.
The S&P 500 climbed 5.94 points (0.42%) to close at 1404.09
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond gained 22/32 to 93 31/32, while the yield lowered to 6.61% from 6.65% on Tuesday.
The Federal Reserve will meet on February 1-2 to determine whether to raise interest rates. The stock market, which expects a .25% increase from the Fed, will be watching closely.
In Apple related businesses, Adobe slid 1 15/16 to close at 61 1/16. Akamai lost 1 13/16 to close at 277 1/2, while ARM Holdings gained 6 1/8 to close at 164 1/8 dollars. Earthlink, Apple's new Internet partner, traded up 3/16 to 44 3/8.
Apple's Power PC partners: IBM lost 2 3/16 to close at 116 7/8. Motorola gained 2 3/4 to close at 139 3/8.
Apple's competitors: Compaq reported earnings of $0.19 per share beating analysts' expectations of $0.16 a share, but revenues declined year over year by 4% to $10.5 billion. Compaq dropped 1 5/8 to close at 29 3/8.
Dell got hammered hard, down 1 3/4 to 40 3/8. Expect the pounding to continue tomorrow, after hours Dell announced that it will miss earnings estimates by $0.04 off the expected $0.20 per share due to semiconductor supply problems and Y2K related corporate purchasing freezes.
Shares of Microsoft were down 3 7/16 to close at 99 3/8. Gateway lost 1 1/4 to end at 60 dollars. Hewlett Packard traded down 3 1/2 at 109. Intel shares slid 5 1/16 to close at 96 1/2.
In other market news: Alan Greenspan spoke today before the Senate banking committee as part of the confirmation hearing formalities. Mr. Greenspan optimistically predicted that the uptrend in productivity due to the evolution of technology shows no signs of peaking. He indicated that the Federal Reserve continues to consider inflation as the greatest threat to the US economy. The Nasdaq fell 70 points as he spoke.
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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