[5:30 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Trick or Treat, Akamai IPO up 458.41% and Apple Closes Right at All Time High!
by Wes George
The technology sectors on the Nasdaq took back market leadership from NYSE financial stocks today leading a broad extension of yesterday's rally. The Nasdaq closed at an all time high of 2,966 up 91.21 points or 3.17%. The Nasdaq's last record close was Oct. 11 at 2,915.9. Today's volume was the second largest on record for the Nasdaq.
The Dow traded higher by 107.33 points (1.01%) to close above the technically important 10700 level at 10729.86 on very strong volume and healthy market internals. This could signal a reverse to the downtrend started in August. However, the Financials and the Transports sold well off their highs towards the end of the day.
The S&P 500 also closed above significant resistance levels, up 20.49 points, or 1.53% to close at 1,362.93 helped by strong retail stocks. The S&P semiconductor equipment index set a new 52-week record high at 398.2 up 5.93%.
The 30-year US Treasury bond yield dropped to 6.149% from a high of 6.40% earlier this week. Alan Greenspan's speech last night seemed to indicate that he thinks the Fed's intervention may not be necessary because real interest rates might rise enough to slow economic growth to manageable levels.
Apple's Clever Investments Grow!
Akamai Technologies' (AKAM) initial public offering, priced at $26 a share, opened at 110 and rose as high as 166 ending the day at $145 3/16 up 119 3/16. At that price, Akamai's market value is US$13.1 billion, that's larger than Apple's, making its IPO the fourth hottest ever offered. Akamai (which means intelligent and cool in Hawaiian) specializes in private server based network solutions for accelerating heavy duty graphic data delivery on the Internet. They have sales of only US$1.3 million so far this year but expect very rapid growth next year.
Apple investor's can't complain because Apple's original US$12.5 million investment in Akamai has overnight become worth in excess of US$500 million. Apple owns 4.1 million (4.7%) shares of AKAM.
Apple also has a US$475 million stake in Arm holdings (ARMY) which skyrocketed another 10 points to close at 84 3/4. ARMY was trading in the $45 range in September.
AAPL closed at the high of the day up 2 1/4 or 2.89% to 80 1/8, which just happens to be AAPL's record all time high too. The day was so good it's spooky!
In other Apple related stocks today, Adobe rose 3 7/16 to 69 15/16. Symantec and Apple's Power PC partners also advanced strongly. In fact, almost all tech stocks rose on today's swelling tide.
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.
Apple
|
