[3:10 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Happy Y2K, Wall Street Parties On, And Apple Climbs
by Wes George
The last trading session of the year on Wall Street proceeded in an orderly fashion as technology stocks led the markets higher with no signs of Y2K problems. The real Y2K test will begin late Sunday evening as financial markets in Asia and Europe began to open for business after the holiday weekend.
Apple climbed another 2 1/2 points to end the shortened trading session at 102 13/16 on low volume. Perhaps the MacWorld Expo optimism is starting to kick in.
The Dow gained 44 point for the last record high of the year, closing at 11497, on a light 377 million shares traded in the half day session. The Dow is up 25.6% for the year, while the Transports are down 5.9% and the utilities were down 21% for the year.
The Nasdaq climbed 32.41 points to close at 4069.28 on 766 million shares placing the Nasdaq up 85.2% for the year. Internet stocks are up 167% in the 1999. Networking stocks soared 120%. Software stocks climbed 116%. Biotechs were up 110% while drug stocks were down 10%. Semiconductors advanced 110%, while disk drive stock were down 53%.
In 1989 the market capitalization of all the stocks on the Nasdaq combined was 386 billion, today it is about 5 trillion. The average volume on the Nasdaq composite was 133 million in 1989, now it's 1.05 billion as averaged for the last year, and closer to 1.2 billion for the last month. Nasdaq officials expected the first 2 billion shares traded day sometime early next year.
The S&P 500 advanced 4.79% points to close up at 1469.26, another record high, placing the S&P up almost 20% for the year. This is the first year in the last five that the S&P has done better than 20% year over year.
The Russell 2000, a small capitalization index, is up 19.2% this year. The gain was due entirely to the technology, especially the Internet stock on the Russell.
The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond slipped 19/32 to close at 95 14/32, while the yield was up to 6.48% from 6.42% on Thursday. Bond traders consider this one of the worst years in a long time for bond yields evan as the market closed near the high yield for 1999. An ill omen of things to come in 2000.
The 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 1 1/4 to 67 1/4, Macromedia was down a fraction to 73 1/8, while Symantec gained 1 3/16 to close at 58 5/8. Akamai gained a fraction to close at 327 5/8, while ARM Holdings gained 4 1/2 to close at 191 1/2.
Apple's Power PC partners: Motorola lost a quarter point to close at 147 1/4, while IBM was down 7/8 at 107 7/8.
Apple's competitors: Dell gave back 1 1/16 to end at 52 1/16. Gateway gained 1 15/16 to close at 72 1/16. Hewlett Packard lost 1 1/2 points to close at 113 3/4. Compaq was up a fraction to 27 1/16. Microsoft lost 7/8 to close at 116 3/4. Intel lost 1 3/8 to end at 82 5/16.
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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