May 17th, 2000
Stocks fell today because, well, they could. The market doldrums continues. After 4 days of anemic rallies, the market seems exhausted. Of course, the interest rate funk is the main villain here. Apple's stock continued to plumb the low end of its trading range. Wall Street knows that the Federal Reserve isn't finished with their attempts to chill the overheating economy with interest rate hikes. Apple dipped by 4 5/16 or -4.08% to close at 101 3/8 on volume of 3.5 million shares. ZDNet News reported, "Apple offered a private "technology demo" of a dual-processor Power Mac G4 running Mac OS X on Tuesday, but sources said the company stopped short of announcing a multiprocessor Mac." Phil Schiller, Apple's vice president of marketing said yesterday, Apple has no plans for a handheld. "We are focused on the personal computer space, not the handheld space, and that's that, I hate to use these words, but there's nothing going on." Only last week, Sony announced its plans for handheld devices. A C-NET News article reported, "This fall, Sony will introduce a sub-$200 PDA with color display, limited wireless Internet access, multimedia capabilities and add-on storage capabilities through its Memory Stick technology, sources say. At the same time, the company will likely announce another, lower-end device with more limited capabilities." The Nasdaq gave back 72 points (-1.96%) to closed at 3644 on continued low volume of 1.2 billion shares. The Dow dropped 164 points (-1.51%) to close at 10769 on very light volume of 817 million shares. The S&P 500 fell 18.26 points (-1.25%) to close at 1447.78. The Mac Observer Stock Watch Virtual Portfolio fell along with Apple and IBM. In Apple related businesses: Akamai gained 15/16 to close at 77 dollars. ARM Holdings lost 13/16 to close at 30 1/4. Adobe traded down by 3 9/16 to close at 120 5/16. Earthlink lost 9/16 to close at 21 7/16 dollars. Motorola fell 3 5/16 to close at 94 7/8 dollars. IBM slid 1 1/2 to 107 1/2. Apple's competitors: Hewlett Packard slid 8 7/16 to close at 130 1/16 after announcing earnings yesterday after the bell. Gateway dropped 3/4 to close at 51 3/4. Compaq traded flat at 28 5/8. Shares of Microsoft gained lost 1 13/16 to 67 11/16. Intel climbed 1 5/16 to close at 123 3/16 after the company announced a two for one stock split on July 2nd and a slight dividend increase. The bellwether 30-year US Treasury bond fell 29/32 to 100 30/32. The yield, which moves inversely to the price, climbed to 6.18%. The Treasury Department plans on buying back $2 billion of the national debt tomorrow as part of the first bond back plan in 70 years. An Associate Press article reported, "the Treasury Department said Wednesday that it wants to buy back 12 outstanding issues of 30-year bonds that will mature between February 2015 and August 2019. The bonds carry coupon interest rates ranging from 7.250 percent to 11.250 percent. Those rates are higher than the current yield on 30-year bonds." For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. We also have many of these same quotes reported live (20 minute delay) on our home page. For other stories regarding Apple's stock activity, visit our Apple Stock Watch Special Report.
[4:00 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Tech Stocks Slump, AAPL Tests Support
by Wes George