Wall Street Continues Apple Love Fest as $AAPL Closes at $118.90

Shares of Apple Inc. ended Thursday at US$118.90 per share, just shy of its all-time closing high of $119.75 set on November 25th, 2014. Investors continued to pile on the love for the company two after its December quarter earnings report, giving the company a market capitalization of $692.6 billion.

$AAPL ended the day at $118.90 per share, a gain of $+3.59 (+3.11 percent), on heavy volume of 84.2 million shares trading hands. The stock hit an intra-day high of $119.19 just before the closing bell.

$AAPL Chart

$AAPL Chart for Year Ending January 29th, 2015
Source: Yahoo! Finance

On Tuesday, Apple reported record high quarterly revenues of $74.6 billion and record-high earnings of $18 billion—those earnings are an all-time record for the corporate world. Apple's success was fueled by sales of 74.5 million iPhones during the quarter, with record high Mac sales of 5.5 million units thrown in for a little somethin'-somethin' on top.

Other fun facts for $AAPL include the reality that Apple is also now a larger brick and mortar retailer than retailing giants JC Penney and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. According to a study commissioned by Marketwatch, Apple is now the world's 24th largest retailer in the U.S., beating household names like JC Penney and Bed, Bath, and Beyond for the first time. For its part, Apple no longer breaks out retail store performance starting with the December quarter.

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