November 5th 1999
The rally continued today on Wall Street boosted by the tame employment report this morning. Although unemployment dipped to 4.1%, its lowest since 1971, wages only climbed 0.1% indicating no inflation on the horizon. The financial stocks lead the Dow higher to close up 64.84 at 10704.48. Volume was high at 977 million shares. The Dow was up more than 200 points at the beginning of the session, but as the pattern has been all week, settled back down for more modest gains later in the day. The Nasdaq continued its winning streak, up 46.34, (1.52%) to close at 3102.29 for the sixth consecutive record high.Volume was very heavy at 1.295 billion shares trading hands. The S&P 500 advanced 7.59 points, (0.56%) to close at 1370.23. The 30-year U.S.Treasury bond was up 24/32 to close at 101 1/32, while the yield fell to 6.04% from 6.09% on Thursday. AAPL opened this week at $80 and closed this afternoon at $88 5/16, advancing 4 11/16 for the day or 5.61% on less than average volume. Of course, today was yet another all time high. Wall Street is waking up to the fact that Apple is going to do very well this Christmas and all of next year. Apple appears to be entering a new higher trading range. Apple's average volume is skewed higher than it should by the week of high churn volume AAPL experienced back in late September. In Apple related stocks, Akamai (AKAM) on its sixth day of trading has stabilized at $174 1/4. Arm Holdings (ARMHY) traded down 5 1/4 to $95 1/4. Oracle advanced another 1/2 to close at $58 11/16. Macromedia continued to sag while Adobe showed strength, up 1 13/16 to $70 11/16. Symantec and Pixar had a down day. Apple's Power PC partners were mixed, IBM extended its downtrend today, but Motorola leaped 7 3/4 to end at 114 1/4. In a conference call with analysts, Motorola said that its semiconductor business is set to grow strongly next year and that they have solved the G4 chip shortage that disrupted Apple in September. Yesterday, PaineWebber Inc. hiked its price target for Motorola to $146 from $125 based on its earnings per share estimate for year 2001 of $4.18. PaineWebber suggested that, "Motorola is the least expensive way, in our opinion, to play the high growth wireless industry." Gateway, Compaq, Hewlett Packard and Intel all closed higher, Microsoft continued to weaken as MSFT investors brace for a DOJ decision in Microsoft's antitrust case which could come as early as later this evening. Warburg Dillon Read on Friday raised its price target on Gateway to $80 a share from $60. Analyst Charlie Wolf speculated that, "Gateway's alliance with America Online has the potential to significantly enhance Gateway's revenues and earnings." 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.
[4:10 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Markets End Week in Rally Mode, Apple Roars to $ 88 5/16!
by Wes George