The Nasdaq Bounces as Senate Signs China Free Trade Bill and Apple Holds Yesterday's Big Gain

The Nasdaq pulled a lovely technical rebound out of its hat today, regaining all of yesterdayis losses and then some. But the Dow, seriously concerned about the state of the euro and oil prices, continued to lag. After yesterdayis $5.42 gain, Appleis stock surrendered little to profit takers.

The Senate passed a vote on Permanent Normal Trade Relations for China and the US business community applauded. For instance, Christopher Galvin, CEO of Motorola release a statement saying, "This action will be recorded in history as the most important step by this Congress for Americais high-tech industry and Americais future ability to compete in our global economy. While at times entangled in other legitimate issues, the choice was simple: be included or excluded. This vote helps assure a level playing field in the competition for vast new opportunities under established rules for global trade under the World Trade Organization (WTO)."

Many tech stocks like china.com (CHINA) and Qualcom (QCOM) traded significantly higher on the news.

Apple was one of the rare tech stocks to show red. The stock lost 23/32 or 1.18% to close at 59 15/16 on volume of 4.8 million shares.

Apple announced it licensed Amazon.comis 1-Click patent for use on the Apple Online Store, as part of an e-commerce patent cross-licensing agreement. All products sold at the Apple Store can now be purchased with the 1-Click feature. See the full Mac Observer story.

Someone has started an online petition at osxonintel.com encouraging Apple to port Mac OS X to the Intel platform. According to the site,

"They have it, we want it. Mac OS X on the Intel platform. Itis a beautiful OS, with all the power of a BSD environment. We know it will run on the Intel platform, we know our hardware will handle it....You know, perhaps the open-source crowd could come up with some nice OpenGL interface over BSD if Apple wonit come through :) "

The Nasdaq steadily climbed 139 points (3.73%) to close at the dayis high of 3865 on strong volume of 1.69 billion shares.

The Dow fell 19 points (-0.18%) to close at 10789 on volume of 1.02 billion shares. The Dow Jones Utility average, after setting a new all-time high last Friday, lost more than 4% today for its biggest one day loss this year as oil prices declined.

The S&P 500 jumped 15.39 points (1.07%) to close at 1459.90.

In Apple related businesses: Akamai climbed 2 1/16 to 61 15/16. Adobe continued to soar 10 7/8 to 152 7/8, another all time high, after rising 9 5/8 yesterday. Adobe has invested $10.5 million Cardiff Software as part of a deal to leverage the .PDF file standard into the emerging market for online form and personalization products. According to an Upside.com article, "Cardiff products have the ability to reduce corporationsi operating costs because they replace manual form processing with an automated online system."

Motorola gained 1 1/4 to 34 1/4. IBM climbed 1 7/8 to 125 1/8.

Appleis competitors: Dell bounced off yesterdayis 52-week low by 1 7/8 to 36 5/16. Gateway was higher by 1.05 to 60.25. The company is slashing prices on two of its bottom line PCs, an unusual move as we approach the high demand Christmas buying season. Compaq jumped 1 7/8 to 31 dollars. Hewlett Packard climbed 2 3/4 to 105 3/4.

Intel soared 4 9/16 to 60 3/8 after a couple of investment firms said the company should benefit from strong PC demand for the rest of the year. Intelis stock has been jerked around a recent Banc of America downgrade and lower price target of $56. Today, the same Banc of America analyst raised his rating on Intel and hiked the price target to back $70 a share, where the stock was just two weeks ago before he lowered his rating.

Assistant Attorney General Joel I. Klein, the man in charge of the governmentis antitrust case against Microsoft, announced he will step down at the end of the month. Microsoftis stock had its best day in a long time climbing 2 dollars to close at 65. The next step in the antitrust case is for the Supreme Court decide either to take on the case itself or direct it to a lower court. CBS Marketwatch quoted a pro-Microsoft trade group leader as saying, "I believe that the (information technology) industry as a whole will welcome his departure. And I say that not because he isnit a nice guy, but because his philosophy on antitrust is that it should be a tool for global regulation."

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter put a "strong buy" rating on GMis Hughes Electronics (GMH), the satellite operator that owns DirecTV, as rumors spread Microsoft may offer to buy out GMis stake.

Sun Microsystems (SUNW) plans to purchase Cobalt Networks for $2 billion stock as an entry into the server appliance market. Sun climbed 2 7/16 to 117 11/16. According to a C/Net article, "The deal marks a major strategic shift for Sun, whose bread and butter has been selling general-purpose servers. While general-purpose servers still are very important for high-end corporate computer networks, special-purpose "server appliances" such as those Cobalt sells typically are less expensive, easier to use, and geared to a specific task."

In economic news: Housing starts rose 0.3% in August for its first gain in 4 months. Housing starts are at their lowest level since June of 1998.

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 Apple Stock Watch Special Report.