The markets are a funny place where the laws of logic donit always apply. When Apple has announced good results, their stock has often trended downwards. Yesterday, for the first time since Steve Jobs took the helm of the company in 1997, Apple announced a huge loss. Naturally the stock goes higher. Or something. The markets were really energized by IBM turning in results that far exceeded expectations. Combined with Apple saying that their inventory issues were under control, just like they said they would, and that they would return to profitability this quarter, the euphoria created by IBM was what actually pushed Apple higher.

In addition, there are some economic issues at hand that also met at a fortuitous time for Apple shareholders. Evidence of a continued slowdown gives investors hope that the Fed will lower interest rates further. That in turn, gives people reason to believe that we can achieve a soft landing and return to slow steady growth. According to a Reuters report:

"The market seems to be saying it has already factored in the bad news," said Michael Farr, president of Farr, Miller & Washington, a Washington D.C.-based fund which manages $379 million. "This trend may have just turned in the past few days -- for the short-term."

The result of all these good-vibration feelings going around was that all three major indexes ended the day higher.

Itis interesting how many reports are saying that Appleis losses exceeded expectations when they actually came in on the low end of specific guidance laid out by Steve Jobs and Fred Anderson in December. At that time, the company said they expected to lose between US$225 and US$250 million. They lost US$247 million excluding one time gains from the sales of shares in ARM Holdings and Akamai. In general, however, most of the press and analysis surrounding Appleis Q1 results has been favorable. In fact, our favorite headline today was from C-Net: "Computer stocks climb on news from IBM and Apple." This sort of thing has added to Appleis good performance today.

Apple closed at 18 11/16, a strong gain of 1 7/8 (+11.15%), on heavy volume of 21,825,600 shares trading hands. Go AAPL!

The Nasdaq closed at 2768.49, a gain of 85.71 (+3.19%).

The Dow closed at 10678.28, up by 93.94 (+0.89%).

The S&P 500 made it a hat-trick to close at 1347.97, higher by 18.50 (+1.39%).

Akamai showed that what goes up must come down. The company announced a plan to sell up to $500 million of equity or debt securities in one or more public offerings over the next two years in order to raise capital. The stock closed at 31 1/4, a loss of 1 1/8 (-3.47%) on volume of 1,962,600 shares trading hands. Apple is a major shareholder of Akamai.

Adobe closed up at 56, up by 2 1/2 (+4.67%) n strong volume of 6,201,000 shares trading hands.

IBM rocked today, rocketing up more than 11 points to closed at 108 5/16, a gain of 11 5/8 (+12.02%) on heavy volume of 25,063,400 shares trading hands.

Motorola announced a new deal with Earthlink to provide wireless e-mail to Motorola customers. The stock closed at 23 15/16, a gain of 1 1/2 (+6.69%) on lighter than normal volume of 15,384,100 shares trading hands.

Earthlink hardly budged on news of the above deal, partially because the stock has already performed well in recent weeks. Earthlink closed at 9, a loss of 1/16 (-0.69%) on volume of 2,957,400 shares trading hands.

Gateway rode the coattails of Apple and IBM to close at 22.38, a strong gain of 2.15 (+10.63%) on strong volume of 4,143,800 shares trading hands.

Dell too closed at 24 3/16, higher by 1 1/2 (+6.61%) on volume of 40,071,400 shares trading hands.

Hewlett Packard closed 34 11/16, another strong gain of 3 1/16 (+9.68%) on strong volume of 11,732,600 shares trading hands.

Intel announced a delay in plans to build a new R&D facility indefinitely. Despite that news, Intel shares rose to close at 32 3/16, up 1 11/16 (+5.53%) on strong volume of 86,208,800 shares trading hands.

Microsoft met reduced expectations and warned of a weaker 3rd quarter. That was after the closing bell, and the stock closed higher at 55 1/2, a gain of 2 9/16 (+4.84%) on volume of 52,468,700 shares trading hands.

For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. For other stories regarding Appleis stock activity, visit our updated Apple Stock Watch Special Report.