October 15th, 1999
Fed chairman Alan Greenspan set the markets off to a bad start with his comment last night about the risk associated with stock market investing at these price levels. Things only got worse when the wholesale price data came in higher than expected. Apple was one of the rare stocks to beat the down draft. AAPL closed at $74.5 up $1.4 with twice the normal volume at 10.5 million shares traded. Wall Street dipped below 10,000 briefly today for the first time in six months as money flowed from the stock markets to bonds due to the higher bond yields. 30-year bond yield lowered to 6.27% The Producer Price Index (PPI) was announced this morning at 1.1%, way above the over-optimistic 0.5% estimate Wall Street was hoping for. The PPI indicates that inflation is a very real threat. The Dow closed down 266.90 to 10019.71. Today was Sixth largest point loss in the Dow's history making this week the single worse week for the Dow since 1987. The Nasdaq closed down 75.05 to 2731.79. The Dow lost 5.8% and the Nasdaq lost 6.6% for the week. The sentiment among traders on Wall Street is that selling climaxes never conclude on Fridays especially in light of the low volume today. Expectations are set for an ugly open on Monday. (BKX) Banking Index set a new 52-week low. Among the Apple related stocks Adobe, Macromedia and Symantec all closed down. Apple's PowerPC partners closed mixed with Motorola closing down and IBM ending the day on the plus side. Apple's PC competitors Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Intel and Microsoft all took a beating as well. Hewlett-Packard bucked the trend to end the day in positive territory with Apple. 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] The Apple Stock Watch: The October Boogey Man Hammers Wall Street But AAPL Stands Tall
by Wes George