Apple Stock Watch - Markets Rally, Yahoo! Warns, Apple Closes Lower

by , 5:40 PM EST, March 7th, 2001

The Dow, the Nasdaq, and the S&P all enjoyed their third consecutive day of gains, though today's Nasdaq gains were considerably more muted than yesterday. The Dow, on the other hand, showed a much more ebullient session than yesterday, so today's session was still considered strong. Analysts and technicians are saying that we may at least be "near a bottom." A lack of a sell off when both JDS Uniphase and Broadcom announced an earnings warning is being taken as a sign of strength in the markets. Abby Joseph Cohen was one of the analysts who came out bullish. According to a Reuters article:

Stocks rose for a third day running on Wednesday after a top Wall Street strategist urged investors to funnel cash into equities following weeks of declines and persistent fears over a soft economy.

Abby Joseph Cohen, Goldman Sachs' chief investment strategist, an influential market analyst who is closely identified with the 1990s bull market, issued the third upbeat recommendation this week. She joined Merrill Lynch's David Bowers and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter's Jay Pelosky in advising clients to buy U.S. stocks.

The Dow was up 1.3%. The Nasdaq closed higher by .88%, though volume was less than convincing. The S&P added .63%. Despite the pronouncements of Abby Joseph Cohen and others, CNBC is reporting that some traders are not at all convinced that the markets have found a bottom. This could be influenced in the short term by Yahoo!

Trading in shares of Yahoo! was halted today as the company announced they would be making an announcement at 5:00 PM EST, one hour after the markets closed. The company announced a significant shortfall in revenue for the current quarter. The company also announced that it would break even for the quarter, as opposed to a 10 cent per share profit during the same quarter last year. Yahoo!'s CEO will be stepping down as well, a search is being initiated to find a replacement. Yahoo! blamed the economic downturn and the shift from dot-com advertising clients to more traditional companies who are much slower in understanding Internet advertising. The company's stock was reopened for trading at 5:29 PM EST where it immediately dropped in after hours trading. Tomorrow's trading is not likely to be pretty, though Yahoo! said they were initiating a US$500 million stock buy-back program.

Apple announced that Mac OS X had reached Golden Master status and was being sent off to manufacturing for duplication. The company also told The Mac Observer that e-mails that had been sent to Apple Store customers who had pre-ordered Mac OS X saying there order was being delayed did not mean that OS X was being delayed. According to Apple PR, the NeXT generation OS will ship on time on March 24th. C|Net published a story reporting that some analysts were critical of Apple not including iDVD, iTunes, and DVD playback support in the 1.0 release of Mac OS X.

AAPL traded in the red all day, except for a brief spike in early morning trading where the stock traded at 21 5/8. The stock ended the day a quarter point lower, but remained above the US$21 level on fairly strong volume. The day's range was 20 3/4 - 21 5/8.

Apple closed at 21 1/4, a loss of 1/4 (-1.16%), on volume of 7,489,300 shares trading hands.

The Nasdaq closed at 2223.92, higher by 19.49 (+0.88%), on volume of 1,768,803,000 shares trading hands.

The Dow closed at 10729.21, up 137.99 (+1.30%), on volume of 1,127,879,000 shares trading hands.

The S&P 500 closed at 1261.75, a gain of 7.95 (+0.63%).

Akamai was downgraded again today by two more analysts. Dain Rauscher Wessels lowered the stock from a Buy Aggressive to a Neutral, and Robert W. Baird lowered the stock from a Market Outperform to a Market Perform. AKAM closed at 12 3/8, a loss of 3/16 (-1.49%), on volume of 3,847,800 shares trading hands. Apple is a large shareholder of Akamai.

Adobe closed at 28 3/4, a gain of 1/4 (+0.88%), on light volume of 4,570,800 shares trading hands.

IBM closed up at 107.55, up 1.55 (+1.46%), on light volume of 7,788,900 shares trading hands.

Motorola closed lower at 17.51, a loss of 0.19 (-1.07%), on light volume of 10,588,900 shares trading hands.

Earthlink hiked DSL prices by US$10. ELNK closed at 10 1/4, a gain of 5/16 (+3.14%), on light volume of 1,215,400 shares trading hands.

Gateway closed 17.72, a gain of 0.75 (+4.42%), on light volume of 2,808,300 shares trading hands.

Dell gave back some of yesterday's gains, though only a little of that, to close at 25 15/16, off 1/4 (-0.95%), on very light volume of 25,516,200 shares trading hands.

Hewlett Packard closed higher at 32.35, up 0.20 (+0.62%), on light volume of 5,959,600 shares trading hands.

Intel gained despite a statement from Chairman Andy Grove that the company would continue to see slow demand for chips. INTC closed at 32 15/16, a gain of 1 7/16 (+4.56%) on strong volume of 77,786,000 shares trading hands.

Microsoft closed at 60 11/16,m a gain of 1 1/4 (+2.10%), on light volume of 29,824,400 shares trading hands.

For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. For other stories regarding Apple's stock activity, visit our updated Apple Stock Watch Special Report. You can also check out our Apple Financial Boards, a new moderated forum for Apple Investors and people who are interested in Apple's financial dealings.

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