[4:10 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Wall Street Braces For Y2K, Takes Apple Down A Notch
by Wes George
The Y2K lock down is now in full swing on Wall Street. The big players, mutual and pension funds, have squared their positions for the year leaving the floor brokers on the NYSE with few orders to fill in a thinly traded market. So, they stood around "whooping" like a flock of bored birds. Go figure. Friday the stock markets will close at 1:00 p.m. (EST) for New Year's Eve.
When Abbey Joseph Cohen closed the NYSE today for the last full session of the year, she broke the gavel and the gavel head fell from the balcony to the NYSE floor in what may be an omen of things to come.
Apple soared as high as 104 by early afternoon, but couldn't hold it to end the session down 3/8 to close at 100 5/16 with 1.8 million shares traded.
The Dow slipped 31 points to close at 11452, on 561 million shares that 's about the slowest trading day of 1999.
The Nasdaq gave back 4.60 points to close at 4036.86 on 1.1 billion shares. Online brokers and oil service stocks were the big losers today.
The Nasdaq is now 4 standard deviations above its 200 day moving average. This the first in history an index has achieved such a large gap. For example, the bottom of last year's Nasdaq correction on October 2, 1998 was a mere negative one standard deviation from the 200 day moving average.
It's worth noting that 50% of the stocks listed on the Nasdaq are down for the year, 2% are unchanged while 48% are up. The Nasdaq is up so much because it is a market capitalization weighted index.
The S&P 500 advanced 1.01 points to close up at 1464.47, another record high.
The Russell 2000, a small capitalization index, is up 9.5% in the last 30 days. Yesterday, the Rusell hit a new record high, confirming the recent move in the S&P 500. The last record high for the Russell was in April of 1998.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond is up 8/32 to close at 96 1/32, while the yield slipped to 6.42% from 6.44% on Wednesday.
According to the labor department, jobless claims fell by 9,000 to hit a 26-year low at 274,000 in the week ending December 25th. That surprised forecasters who expected an increase in claims by 4,000.
The Wall Street Journal noted today that, "Economists consider jobless claims levels below 300,000 an indication of an extremely tight labor market, meaning it's difficult for some employers to find workers. Initial jobless claims have been running below 300,000 each week since early October."
This tight job market combined with consumer confidence at an all time high has bond traders betting on as much a half point hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the first half of next year.
In Apple related businesses, Adobe closed up a fraction to 66, Macromedia was down 1 3/4 to 73 7/16, while Symantec gave back 3 5/16 after yesterday's 3 1/2 to close at 67 7/16. Akamai easily shattered its old all time high of 309 1/8 with a 23 7/16 point surge to close at 327 while ARM Holdings gave back 12 1/2 point to close at 187.
Apple's Power PC partners: Motorola advanced 2 1/4 to close at 147 7/8, while IBM traded flat at 109.
Apple's competitors: Dell was up a fraction to end at 52 1/16. Gateway gained 3/8 to close at 70 1/8. Hewlett Packard climbed 1 5/8 points to close at 115 1/4. Compaq was up 15/16 after a couple of poor days to 27 7/16. Microsoft lost 5/16 to close at 117 5/8. Intel lost a fraction to end at 83 11/16.
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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