November 9th 1999
The markets take a well deserved breather after the recent charge forward. Today's decline was led by the financial stocks on the Dow and a broad group of technology stocks on the Nasdaq. On November 16th the Fed will announce whether it intends to raise interest rates. Tomorrow's Producer Price Index numbers will reveal the latest measure of inflation in wholesale prices and may have some influence on the Fed's decision. Nervous investors are expected to retrench over the next week in anticipation of the Fed's action. The Dow sagged 101.53 (0.95%) to 10617.32 on a volume of 833 million shares. Gold and oil service stocks jumped today as energy commodity prices rose. The Nasdaq pulled back 19 points (0.61%) to close at 3124.92 on record high volume of 1.444 billion shares traded. The last high volume record was set on October 29th. The S&P 500 moved down 11.73 (0.85%) to close at 1365.28 The Findings of Fact continued to shake Microsoft related stocks and their competitors today. Apple gave it all back today retracing 6 3/4 points to 89 5/8. That's still better than a point above last Friday's close. Today's weakness was due in part to Richard Gardner's (Salomon Smith Barney) downgrading of Apple to Outperform from Buy. Mr. Gardner did not change his 12-month target of $115 for AAPL. Be Incorporated (BEOS) after a big move yesterday soared 1 11/32 or (20.0%) to close at 7 27/32 today. While Red Hat Inc. retraced 5 1/8 (5.0%) to close down at 98 1/2. Microsoft ended down 1 1/16 to 88 7/8. In Apple related stocks only Pixar, Adobe, Arm Holdings and Dell were in positive territory. The 30-year Treasury bond dropped up 6/32 while the yield was up to 6.07%. 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.
[4:10 PM] Apple Stock Watch: Technology Rallies higher Without Microsoft, Apple Soars to 96 3/8
by Wes George