The Stock Marketis Catch-22:
Many market observers see the stock market in a no win situation. If Alan Greenspan gets his way and the Federal Reserveis interest rate hikes cool the economy it will mean lower earnings for many companies. This could hit high flying tech stocks hardest, since we all know what happens if they miss earnings by even a penny. On the other hand, if the economy keeps going strong, then Mr. Greenspan will certainly add more points to the interest rate in coming months hurting any one with debt, and that would include most New Economy businesses. (Apple has no debt.) Looking further out, every interest rate hike added lessens the odds for the so-called soft landing that Mr. Greenspan is aiming for.
Apple stair-stepped higher by 2 1/2 to close at 50 13/16 on low volume of 2.7 million shares.
The Nasdaq bounced 103 points (2.84%) to closed at the high of the day at 3766 on volume of 1.5 billion shares.
Nasdaqis bounce came from a key support zone suggesting the pain may be over at least in the short term. The Index once up 40% from the deepest lows of May have now given back about 18% of those gains. Semiconductor stocks came roaring back today. Internet stocks were up about 2%, while the biotechs continued to trend downward.
There were 28 IPOs scheduled for last week, some were never priced. Market watchers fear that with 36 more deals priced for this week the supply of equity is swamping demand.
Richard McCabe of Merrill Lynch believes -- for too many reasons to go into here -- that both the Nasdaq and the Dow must retest the lows of May and April in order to finally flush out the speculation from this market and to bring us back to the sense of caution that once reigned before the tech bubble of late 1999, early 2000.
The Dow climbed 10 points (0.10%) to close at 10521 on volume of 930 million shares. The Dow was up about 80 points earlier in the day, but give most of that back in the last 15 minutes.
The S&P 500 climbed 10.94 points (-0.77%) to close at 1430.83.
In Apple related businesses: Akamai gained 7/8 to 78 7/8. Adobe climbed 3 1/8 to 114 1/2. Earthlink gained a buck to 12 1/2. Motorola gained 1/8 to 33 3/8. IBM climbed 5/8 to 112 7/16.
Appleis competitors: Dell gained 1/4 to 43 15/16. Gateway was higher by 1/16 to 55 3/16. Compaq gained 1/16 to 28 1/16. Shares of Microsoft climbed 1/8 to 69 13/16. Intel gained 2 3/16 to 66 3/4. Hewlett Packard climbed 1 15/16 to 109 3/16.
In economic news: Itis going to be a busy week of economic data releases but the most important ones are the jobless claims on Thursday and the unemployment rate for July on Friday. Although Mr. Greenspan has said he believes that construction spending (due out on tomorrow at 10 am) is a leading economic indicator.
For full quotes on all the companies mentioned in this article, we have assembled this set of quotes at Yahoo! for your reference. For other stories regarding Appleis stock activity, visit our Apple Stock Watch Special Report. </body>