The theme of today is that no bad news is good news. This includes Apple which chalked up another 13/16 to close above 19 for the first time since mid-November. Microsoft was the ebullient factor of todayis trading as they met analyst expectations in an announcement after the bell yesterday. They also lowered expectations for the rest of their fiscal year, but the markets took this as a good sign. The result is that Microsoft added almost 10% to their stock value. According to C-Net report:

"The expectation is that the worst could very well be over and that results from here continue to go higher," said George Godfrey, an analyst at ING Barings, who rates the shares "buy."

Not much happening on the Apple front other than rumors of an update to Mac OS X Server expected in the spring. Again, the markets seemed to take this as good news and sent AAPL up more than 4%.

Also effecting the markets was Sun Microsystems who turned in good results. Sunis crime was meeting projections while falling short of expectations. Thatis a no-no and Sun shed some 11% as a result. That helped keep the Nasdaq even by offsetting most of the gains of Microsoft and Apple.

Apple closed at 19 1/2, a gain of 13/16 (+4.35%) on strong volume of 13,866,500 shares trading hands.

The Nasdaq closed at 2770.42, a slight (and last minute) gain of 1.93 (+0.07%).

The Dow closed dropped as Home Depot and some financial stocks more than offset Microsoft and other tech stocks. The Dow closed at 10587.59, a loss of 90.69 (-0.85%).

The S&P 500 closed at 1342.55, a loss of 5.42 (-0.40%).

Akamai gave up more of its recent gains to close at 30, lower by 1 1/4 (-4.00%) on volume of 2,620,200 shares trading hands. Apple is a major shareholder of Akamai.

Adobe closed higher at 58 1/4, a gain of 2 1/4 (+4.02%) on volume of 5,166,300 shares trading hands.

IBM continued to show strength after strong gains yesterday that were sparked by an excellent earnings announcement on Wednesday evening. The stock closed at 111 1/4, a gain of 2 15/16 (+2.71%) on volume of 14,648,700 shares trading hands.

Motorola closed at 24 11/16, a gain of 3/4 (+3.13%) on volume of 26,529,700 shares trading hands.

Earthlink fell victim to a bit of profit taking to close at 8 21/32, a loss of 11/32 (-3.82%) on volume of 2,688,400 shares trading hands.

Gateway played on the old maxim that Wall Street loves Michael J. Fox*. The company announced that Mr. Fox would the companyis new spokesperson (something we wish Apple would have considered), and the stock posted a nice gain. Gateway closed at 23.69, up 1.31 (+5.85%) on volume of 5,244,000 shares trading hands.

Dell received some nice words from Kevin McCarthy of CS First Boston that helped give the companyis stock a boost. Dell closed at 25 5/8, higher by 1 7/16 (+5.94%) on very strong volume of 58,839,900 shares trading hands.

Hewlett Packard closed at 35 3/4, a gain of 1 1/16 (+3.06%) on volume of 13,008,800 shares trading hands.

Intel closed higher at 33 9/16, a gain of 1 3/8 (+4.27%) on strong volume of 81,130,800 shares trading hands.

Microsoft announced yesterday after the closing bell that they had met reduced expectations and warned of a weaker 3rd quarter. The stock closed higher at 61, a gain of 5 1/2 (+9.91%) 104,463,104 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.

* To our knowledge there is no such maxim.