[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Markets Flip-Flop And Send Apple Packing
by Wes George
It's going to be a treacherous week in the stock market as institutional investors move to the sidelines while the hedge funds and day traders add volatility to an already shaky year-end market.
Apple gave back 4 3/16 (4.05%) to close down at 99 5/16 on very weak volume of 1.5 million shares.
Strategist Christine Callies of Credit Suisse First Boston believes new sectors will lead Wall Street in the first half of 2000, saying, "Technology leadership should become more selective and risk averse." Credit Suisse is shifting its technology focus to the nonenterprise computer hardware sector (among others) and highlights Apple as a stock to watch.
The Dow after being up strongly all day declined in the last hour to close down 14 points to 11391 with a volume of 724 million shares traded.
The market capitalization for all US stocks is now $17 trillion, up 27% this year. The market cap of the two biggest corporations, Microsoft and General Electric, is more than one trillion dollars.
The Nasdaq gained 5.94 points (0.15%) to close at 3975.38 for the 59th record high of the year on 1.15 billion shares. The Nasdaq traded in a 90 point range from above 4000 early in the day to down 60 points around noon. Internet and computer hardware stocks were particularly weak.
The S&P 500 lost 1.24 points (0.09%) to close at 1457.10.
The Wall Street Journal speculated today that this may have been the strongest Christmas shopping season of the decade with estimates running as high as an 8.0% increase in year over years retail sales. The actual sales numbers won't be out till next week.
Goldman Sach conducted an online shopping survey and found that 73% of online shoppers felt their expectations were exceeded.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond traded flat to close at 95 19/32, while the yield fell to 6.45% from 6.49% last Thursday.
Industrial output in Japan was up 3.8% in November while the dollar is hovering near 4 year lows against the Yen.
In Apple related businesses, Adobe lost 2 1/4 to close at 64 3/4, Macromedia was down 2 5/16 to 78 13/16, while Symantec lost 2 1/2 to close at 61 1/4. Akamai gained 4 7/16 to close at 285 7/8 while ARM Holdings was up 4 7/16 to close at 189 5/8.
Apple's Power PC partners: Motorola was down 3 7/16 to close at 141 3/8 while IBM rose 1 3/8 to close at 110.
Apple's competitors: Dell lost 3/8 to close at 52 5/16. Gateway lost 3/16 to close at 70. Hewlett Packard gave back 4 points to close at 108 5/8. Compaq was down 1 point to close at 27 3/4.
Microsoft gained 1 11/16 to close at 119 1/8. Intel rose 1 15/16 to close at 85 1/16.
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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