Apple Bounces Off Of Opening Low, Rallies Back To Near Break Even

Appleis stock took a hard hit this morning as the markets reopened after nearly a week off. Today marks the first day of trading since the terrorist attacks last week in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania brought trading to a screeching halt.

Appleis stock opened up at 15.73, down 1.64. This followed the rest of the markets where the Dow and the Nasdaq both faced stiff losses in the opening session. However, once those losses set in, many began recovering, and Apple was among those. AAPL immediately began stair stepping its way back up, trading as high as 17.00 in mid-morning trading. Appleis cash on hand sits at some US$4.2 billion, giving Apple a base value of 11.00 - 14.00 per share, depending on who does the figuring. With the companyis other assets and patent portfolio figured in, its stock has built in support at the 16.00 level, and the markets have acted accordingly.

There had been concern that the markets would take a more serious blow once trading resumed, but it would appear so far that investors are prepared to take the long-term look. In addition, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates another 50 basis points (a half percentage point) at 8:00 AM EDT, bringing the overnight lending rate down to 3%. We havenit seen rates that low in many years, but the Fed said it wasnit all because of the attacks, which we donit believe for a second. From a CBS Marketwatch report:

"Even before the tragic events of last week, employment, production and business spending remained weak," the Fed said in a statement. "Last weekis events have the potential to damp spending further."

As of this writing, Appleis stock is trading at 16.931, down 0.439 (-2.53%), on volume of 2,002,800 shares trading hands.

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