[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Santa Claus Delivers For Wall Street And Apple Too
by Wes George
The usually taciturn floor brokers at the NYSE gathered together and sang "Wait till the sun shines, Nelly" as is their century old custom on this day, the last trading session before Christmas. Nelly didn't have to wait long. The sun illuminated Wall Street for an across the board record crushing day.
Apple gained 3 9/16 to close at 103 1/2 on fairly weak volume. Apple released their 1999 Annual Report (SEC form 10-K) yesterday which contains Apple's financial data through September 25th.
The Dow soared 202 points to close at 11405 (1.80%), well above its old record closing of 11326 set on August 25, with a volume of 734 million shares traded.
Beaten down stocks in the paper products, supermarket, basic materials and electronic retailers continued their bounce back and happily added to the market broadening that started yesterday. Advancing issues led decliners by a 2 to 1 margin. The Dow is up 1.3% for the week.
The Nasdaq advanced 32 points (0.82%) to close at yet another record high of 3969 (the 58th record high for the year and 13th for the month!) on volume of 1.2 billion shares traded. The Nasdaq climbed above 4000 intraday for the first ever time and is up 5.5% for the week.
Business to Business Internet stocks such as Ariba (ARBA), Inktomi (INKT) and Commerce One (CMRC) led the charge on the Nasdaq. Ironically, consumer e-businesses like e-Toy (ETYS) and Amazon (AMZN) have been losing ground, even during this Christmas season, as investors sense that these companies were ill prepared to handle the onslaught of Christmas online shopping.
Also strong today were many computer hardware, biotechs and software companies.
The S&P 500 advanced 22.22 points (1.55%) to close at 1458.35 for another record high and a 2.5% gain for the week. Even the Russell 2000 put in a 52-week high today.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond was down 14/32 to close at 95 6/32, while the yield rose to 6.49% from 6.46% on Wednesday. Bonds traded in a volatile range before coming to rest at near 3-year high yields in a shortened holiday session. Next week is an important one for bonds as the long bond yield challenge the technically important 6.5% level.
The Commerce Department reported that personal income increased 0.4% in November, but spending by individuals rose even faster at 0.5%. Personal income which includes wages, interest and government benefits rose much faster in October, up 1.3%.
In a separate report there was a sharper than expected increase for US factory orders in November. Durable good orders rose 1.2% in November. In Both October and September durable good orders were down by 0.9% and 1.5% respectively.
The Wall Street Journal interprets these figures to mean that "the US economy remains strong as it steams ahead, marking the longest string of growth in the nation's history early next year. For investors, however, the strength of the manufacturing sector could add to worries that the economy is overheated and put pressure on equity markets."
In Apple related businesses, Adobe gained 3/16 to close at 67, Macromedia was fractionally down to end at 81 1/8, while Symantec lost 2 11/16 to close at 63 3/4. Akamai lost 9 9/16 to close at 281 7/16 while ARM Holdings was up a half point to 181 1/2.
Apple's Power PC partners wallowed in the sun. Motorola was climbed 3 1/4 to close at 145. IBM rose fractionally to close at 108 3/8.
Apple's competitors were up across the board. Dell climbed 2 3/8 to close at 52 11/16 as word got out that Dell's website recorded a 75% surge in online traffic for the week ending December 19. Gateway was up 1/4 to close at 70 3/16.Gateway's website received 40% more hits than usual during the same week. Hewlett Packard was up 5 9/16 to close at 112 1/2. Compaq was up 1 3/8 to close at 28 3/4.
Microsoft was down a fraction to close at 117 7/16 after Greg Maffei, Microsoft's chief financial officer, resigned to become CEO of a Canadian fiber-optic telecom firm. Intel rose 5/8 to close at 83 1/8.
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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