November 24th 1999
Historically, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a good day on Wall Street, and this year didn't disappoint investors. Led by the Internet stocks and high tech consumer product vendors, it looks as if investors expect a digital Christmas buying spree. Guess who was on their shopping list? The Dow advanced 12.5 points (0.11%) to close at 11008. Volume was near 719 millions shares traded. In general, the stock market continues to soar on the strong US dollar and increased capital flow into the US stock markets from foreign investors. In part, the dollar is robust because the Euro is so weak, sinking to new lows recently against the Yen, British Sterling and the dollar. Moreover, The US economy is growing at a faster rate than thought early this month. The gross domestic product, or how many goods and services the US economy delivers, was revised upward from 4.8% reported for the July-September quarter to a 5.5% annual growth rate. This bodes well for retailers and "e-tailers"--on line consumer goods stores-- alike. The Nasdaq swelled 77.62 (2.32%) to close at 3420.49 on heavy volume of 1.2 billion shares traded. The S&P 500 rose 12.44 points (0.89%) to close at 1417.08. In today's abbreviated bond trading session the 30-year US Treasury bond was down 7/32 to close at 98 26/32, while the yield rose to 6.21% from 6.19% on Tuesday. The bond market didn't like the implications for rising inflation from the newly revised upward GDP numbers. Bond traders are speculating that the Feds will raise rates again in March to cool the economy down. Apple shares continued their upward trajectory due to the announcement earlier this week that Apple's iBook is the single best selling notebook computer in the retail market as we enter the hot Christmas shopping season. Apple is up 1 13/16 (1.95%) to close at 94 5/8 after rising over 2 points yesterday on high volume. Today's volume was low at 1.9 million AAPL shares trading hands. In Apple related stocks today, Macromedia, Symantec, and Akamai were all marginally down. While Adobe and Arm Holdings managed to gain a bit. Apple's Power PC partners didn't partake in today's fun. Motorola was up an 1/8 after being down most of the day to close at 116 15/16. IBM lost 2 points to close at 104 1/16. An article in this morning's Wall Street Journal questioned an IBM accounting procedure. In other PC stocks it was a good day for the vendors. Dell soared 2 1/16 to close at 43 5/16. Gateway was up 1 13/16 to close at 79 1/4. Another winning day for Hewlett Packard, up 3 7/16 to end at 97 1/2. There wasn't any news to explain the strength, just the general feeling of investors that a lot of Christmas trees will have computers beneath them this year. Intel rose 3 3/16 to end the day at 82 3/16 after they got a shot in the arm with an upgrade to "strong buy" from Banc of America Securities and a price target increase to 110 a share from 100. Some stocks, especially wireless telecom plays like Nextel (NXTL) and ATT (T) really soared today. Sun Microsystems was up 7 3/8 to close at 134 1/2. The Linux service company, Red Hat Inc. (RHAT) has almost doubled its share price since Judge Jackson's findings of fact revealed Microsoft's monopolistic tendencies. Red Hat climbed 25 3/16 to close at 168 15/16. 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.
[4:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Apple Offers Thanks For Higher Stock
by Wes George