AAPL Dips to $332 Amidst Broad Selloff

Shares in Apple Inc. dipped Wednesday amidst a market-wide selloff sparked by fears of Japan’s ongoing earthquake/tsunami crisis and growing concern over the country’s nuclear plants. In the early-afternoon session, AAPL had slipped to US$332.32 per share, down $13.11 (-3.80%), on heavy volume.

AAPL Chart

AAPL Chart for March 16th, 2011
Source: Yahoo! Finance

To put the downward slide in perspective, the DOW was down 196.82 (-1.66%) to 11658.60; the NASDAQ was off 39.63 (-1.49%) to 2627.70; and the S&P 500 dropped 20.49 (-1.6%) to 1261.38.

Microsoft is trading at $24.81, down $0.58 (-2.28%); Intel was down to $19.835, off by $0.345 (-1.71%); HP was down to $40.41, off by $0.52 (-1.27%); and shares in Oracle were trading at $29.793, down $1.378 (-4.42%).

Motorola was one of the few tech companies in positive territory following the announcement of the WiFi-only Xoom Android tablet. The company said it will release a 32GB WiFi-only Xoom tablet on March 27th for $599, in line with Apple’s 32GB iPad 2.

Shares of MOT were trading at $40.57, up $0.06 (+0.15%). The stock had been up to $41.57 per share earlier in the day before the broad selloff took most of those gains back.

In Apple-specific news, brokerage firm BTIG raised its price target for AAPL to $450 per share, an increase based on the iPad 2. The firm raised its iPad sales estimates to 40 million units in 2011, up from 33 million units, and believes the iPhone 4 will continue to sell well.

The company’s bump for Apple wasn’t enough to overcome general economic fears centered on Japan, however.

*In the interest of full disclosure, the author holds a small share in AAPL stock that was not an influence in the creation of this article.