Tech bad. Blue Chips good. Alan Greenspan? Less confusing than is his normal wont. The Fed Chairman spent the morning testifying to the Senate Budget Committee on the state of the economy. For the first time in many years, Mr. Greenspan gave a thumb up on a tax cut because he saw the real possibility of paying off the national debt even with such a tax cut. Even 6 months ago, Mr. Greenspan has been saying that paying off the debt is more important than a tax cut, but current revenue projections have made him more than confident that the government is collecting far more money than it needs. Thatis a very interesting development and one that is likely to make passage of President Bushis tax cut plan an easy task. Mr. Greenspan was less up front about whether or not his organization would be lowering taxes at next weekis Fed meeting, but once again he was more open than usual about the idea off of further cuts.
Tech stocks almost universally reacted negatively to this news as money flowed out of the tech sector into the Dow. Most of the stocks we track in the Stock Watch all ended the day lower, and that includes Apple. The companyis employees were treated to an hour of Q&A with Steve Jobs concerning the companyis product and profitability. Apple also got a ringing endorsement from The Wall Street Journalis Walt Mossberg in his review of the PowerBook G4. These events did not seem to have an impact on the companyis stock price as Apple closed lower.
Apple closed at 19 15/16, a loss of 9/16 (-2.74%) on volume of 8,738,100 shares trading hands.
The Nasdaq closed at 2754.28, a loss of 104.87 (-3.67%).
The Dow closed at 10729.52, a gain of 82.55 (+0.78%).
The S&P 500 closed at 1357.51, down 6.79 (-0.50%).
Akamai Announced earnings yesterday, and the stock suffered today. Akamai was upgraded by Merrill Lynch and Epoch Partners, while it was downgraded by Robert W. Baird and Lazard Freres. Such is life on Wall Street, but the stock dropped the gains made during the last two trading sessions. Akamai closed at 29 5/8, a loss of 5 3/4 (-16.25%) on triple the normal volume with 10,744,800 shares trading hands. Apple is a major shareholder of Akamai.
Adobe closed at 57 1/16, off by 3 1/16 (-5.09%) on volume of 5,163,700 shares trading hands.
IBM was the only stock we track to trade higher today. IBM closed at 110 3/4, up 5/16 (+0.28%) on light volume of 4,975,400 shares trading hands.
Motorola lost market share to Siemenis in Wester Europe in the cell phone market, and the stock shed 4%. Motorola closed at 22 1/2, a loss of 15/16 (-4.00%) on volume of 8,509,400 shares trading hands.
Earthlink closed at 8 15/32, a loss of 27/32 (-9.06%) on light volume of 870,600 shares trading hands.
Gateway closed at 20.50, down 1.71 (-7.70%) on volume of 3,621,400 shares trading hands.
Dell announced a new partnership with Unisys and a new certification program for "Top Service Providers." The stock lost ground today and closed at 26 7/16, a loss of 11/16 (-2.53%) on strong volume of 44,177,500 shares trading hands.
Hewlett Packard closed at 34 7/16, a loss of 9/16 (-1.61%) on volume of 6,159,400 shares trading hands.
Intel closed at 34 1/2, down 1 3/4 (-4.83%) on volume of 45,771,000 shares trading hands.
Microsoft has suffered from server problems for three days now, and just when they had reported their sites were once again accessible, they went out again. Oops. Microsoft closed lower at 61 13/16, a loss of 1 1/8 (-1.79%) on light volume of 42,676,100 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.