September 15th, 1999

[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Market Burps As Apple Hiccoughs

The stock market took a funny turn today as an inflation friendly Consumer Price Index report was turned in. Normally this would result in a good trading day for stocks, but instead we saw a downturn across the board. This included Apple, her competitors, and other Mac related companies alike. Motorola in particular was punished for announcing it was purchasing General Instruments, a maker of broadband related equipment, at a premium. Motorola fell more than 5% on the news.

Apple closed at 75 3/8, a loss of 2 7/16 or 3.13%. Volume remained moderately low with 3,205,700 shares trading hands. This is usually indicative of downturn rather than a selloff.

Mac related companies also fared poorly with Macromedia, Adobe, and Symantec all closing lower. The PC side tagged along as Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Gateway 2000, Hewlett-Packard, and Compaq also closed in Negative Territory.

Rounding out the day, The Dow closed at 10801.42, down 108.91 and the Nasdaq closed at 2814.17, a loss of 54.12.

The Mac Observer Spin: The markets did not seem to notice that no new products were announced by Apple at the Apple Expo in Paris this morning. This is hopefully indicative that traders were not particularly looking for new Apple branded products to be announced. With Apple announcing that the iBook was shipping, this will hopefully allay any ongoing concerns in the product area for the time being. Apple delivering the iBook on time is good news in any event.

Apple