November 1st 1999

[4:40 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Mixed Markets Hold On to Last Week's Gains, But Apple Sags
by Wes George

The stock markets held on to last week's gains today. However, midday news of a 6.9 earthquake 28 miles northeast of Taiwan in the Pacific Ocean, spooked some semiconductor and computer hardware stock investors. September's Taiwan earthquake measured 7.6 on the Richter scale, making it about 10 times the size of today's smaller quake.

The Dow sagged lower steadily all day to close near the session low, down by 81 points (0.76%) to close at 10648 on strong volume. Financial stocks sold off today after last week's stellar performance and the Transports were off by 2.6%.

The Nasdaq almost broke the 3000 point mark at 11:00 am, but dropped back to close at 2968 up only 1.2 points or 0.04% with just over a billion shares traded. Today was yet another Nasdaq record high.

The S&P 500 closed down 8.8 points, or 0.65% to close at 1354.

The 30-year US Treasury bond yield rose to 6.17% from 6.149% last Friday.

Apple saw some profit taking today closing down 2 1/2 to end at 77 5/8. The earthquake in Taiwan may have added to Apple's weakness in the afternoon.

In Apple related stocks, Akamai (AKAM) had another good day up 29 1/8 points to close at 174 5/16 after gaining 458% on Friday, AKAM's first day on the Nasdaq. Investor's also ran up Arm Holding (ARMHY) today by 6 13/16 points to 91 9/16.

Pixar (PIXR) had its first up day in a while, advancing 2 1/16 to close at 40 1/8. Adobe, Macromedia and IBM all closed lower. Motorola was up 4 15/16 to close at 102 1/4 on the news that it has introduced a single chip to deliver the Internet over cellular phones.

Apple's PC rivals had a mixed day. Compaq, Dell and Hewlett Packard were up, while Gateway, Intel and Microsoft all ended lower.

Oracle (ORCL) advanced 3 5/8 today to close at 51 3/16, a new high, on heavy volume. Investors learned that Oracle expects to grow rapidly in 2000. Merrill Lynch analyst Chris Shilakes raised his 12-month price target on Oracle to 60 from 55.

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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