[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: PC Stocks Trade Lower on Dell's Warning, Apple Slips Too
by Wes George
Gateway, Compaq, IBM, and now Dell--the PC manufacturers just don't have the great earnings growth figure that tech investors lust after. Ironically, Apple's insanely great earning curves can't completely spare the company from the computer hardware dump, as goes the sector, goes AAPL.
The broader market tilts downward as anxieties mount just three days ahead of the Fed's meeting to decide the direction of interest rates. The Nasdaq Composite finds itself back to just below where it started on the first of the year after a roller coast ride in January.
Dell's CFO, Thomas Meredith, appeared on CNBC to lower Wall Street's expectations on Dell's future growth. The company can no longer continue its long tradition of 45 to 50% year over year growth. According to Mr. Meredith, from now on earnings growth will be contained to a more sustainable 30% range due to the large market capitalization of Dell.
Apple lost 3/16 to close at 110 on low trading volume of 3 million shares.
The Nasdaq slid 30 points (0.75%) to close at 4039 with 1.8 billion shared traded. The biotech sector was down more than 3.0%, and Internet stocks got hit hard today.
The Dow lost 5 points (0.05%) to close at 11028, on volume of 1.1 billion shares traded.
The S&P 500 lost 5.53 points (0.39%) to close at 1398.56
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond traded 21/32 higher to 94 21/32, while the yield lowered to 6.50% from 6.61% on Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve will meet on February 1-2 to determine whether to raise interest rates. The stock market, which expects a quarter point increase from the Fed, will be watching closely.
In Apple related businesses, Akamai penned a deal with IBM to market their Web page acceleration services, broadly expanding the Akamai's access to new customers. Akamai gained 3 5/8 to close at 281 1/8, while IBM traded lower along with the weak computer hardware sector by 3 1/4 to close at 113 1/2.
Adobe gained 11/2 to close at 62 11/16. ARM Holdings lost 6 1/8 to close at 158 dollars. Earthlink, Apple's new Internet partner, traded down 3/8 to 44 dollars. Motorola lost 3 5/16 to close at 136 3/16.
Apple's competitors: Dell got hammered down 2 13/16 to 37 9/16. Yesterday, 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. Today, a number of analysts rushed to Dell's defense.
Compaq dropped 15/16 to close at 27 15/16. Shares of Microsoft were down 5/8 to close at 98 3/4. Gateway beat the down trend rising 1 7/8 to end at 60 7/8. Hewlett Packard traded down 5/16 at 108 7/16. Intel shares gained 1 5/8 to close at 98 1/8.
In other market news: The Commerce Department released the durable goods order data for December showing climbing demand for items that last three years or longer. Durable good orders rose 4.1% last month, the largest gain since July.
From the Wall Street Journal: "December orders for electronic and other electrical equipment jumped 4.6%. Orders in the category -- which includes semiconductors, circuit boards, telecommunications equipment and home appliances -- rose six of the last seven months. Orders for industrial machinery, however, fell 4.2% in December. The sector, which includes computers and machine tools, has logged declines in six of the last eight months."
The employment cost index release was delayed till tomorrow morning due to the snow storm. It's projected to climb 0.9 % in the 4th quarter. Also look for the gross domestic product number tomorrow, GPD growth is expected to come in at 5.2%, too high for the Fed's preference.
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.
Apple
|
