[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Slow day on Wall Street, Apple Slides Lower
by Wes George
A tug-of-war between momentum players and the profit takers ensued on the Nasdaq after yesterday's record one day gain of 127 points. The bulls won. Tomorrow is the last trading session before Christmas.
Apple lost 2 9/16 to close at 99 15/16 on fairly weak volume. Apple released their 1999 Annual Report (SEC form 10-K) today which contains financial data through September 25th.
The Dow rose just 3 points to close at 11203 on 850 million shares traded. Deutsche Telecom (DT) and other international wireless telecommunication stocks were higher today. Interestingly, there seemed to be some buying of beaten down stocks in the consumer goods, food and drug sectors, a sign that the market may begin to broaden out.
The Nasdaq advanced 26 points (0.66%) to close at yet another record high at 3937 on volume of 1.46 billion shares traded. It was a volatile day for Internet stocks, while networking, semiconductor equipment and Linux related stocks show some profit taking after recent gains.
The S&P 500 advanced 2.70 points (0.19%) to close at 1436.13, good enough for a record high.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond was down 2/32 to close at 95 16/32, while the yield rose to 6.46% from 6.45% on Tuesday. The bond market will close early on Thursday at 2 p.m. EST and remain closed for Christmas Eve.
The gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 5.7% for the 3rd quarter. Economists expected a 5.5% growth rate. The GDP gauges the growth of the US economy by measuring the total output of goods and services. Strong consumer spending accounted for most of the increase which was the highest quarterly GDP growth rate since 1998 and much higher than the 2nd quarter 1999 growth rate of 1.9%.
According to the Wall Street Journal the booming economy's growth is "considerably higher than the Federal Reserve's preferred 3% speed limit, believed to be the growth rate that can be sustained without sparking inflation."
In Apple related businesses, Adobe gained 3 1/2 to close at 66 7/8, Macromedia lost a half point to end at 81 1/2, while Symantec gained 1 11/16 to close at 66 7/16. Akamai got hit with some profit taking, down 10 7/8 to close at 291, so did ARM holdings, down 14 points to close at 181.
3Com(COMS) announced strong earnings yesterday, but warned that their network equipment business isn't doing nearly as well as their Palm Pilot division, which they plan to spin off in an initial public offering later next year. 3-COM trade off 4 11/16 points to close at 48 7/16.
Corel (CORL) recently bubbled as high as 44 bucks a share over the Linux craze. Today that bubble popped when Corel announced that they expect a $0.14 a share loss for their 4th quarter. Surprised analysts and shareholders had expected a positive $0.12 per share for the quarter. Corel closed down 5 3/8 at 13 3/16.
Lucent (LU) was off by 3 1/16 to close at 76 7/16 after they released their quarterly report (10Q) yesterday, which showed vendor financing details that didn't sit well with investors, while backlogged orders dropped off. Merrill Lynch is calling Lucent's bad day a buying opportunity.
Apple's Power PC partners had a mixed day. Motorola was up 3 1/2 to close at 142. IBM was down 1 7/8 to close at 108 1/4.
Apple's competitors also had mixed returns today. Dell climbed above 50 dollars to close at 50 5/16. Gateway was off again, down 2 1/16 to close at 69 15/16. Hewlett Packard was down 1 13/16 to close at 106 15/16. Microsoft was up 1 1/16 to close at 117 9/16 while Intel down fractionally to close at 82 1/2.
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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