Fears about the economy are still giving investors the jitters. Everybody, and their brother, is now convinced that the Fed will be cutting interest rates next week. How much is the only question. Will it be 25 basis points (1/4 point) or 50 (1/2 point)? Well, if itis 50 basis point, does that mean that economy is in far worse condition than we ever thought? After all, Mr. Greenspan was urging Congress to cut taxes in his testimony yesterday, and thatis a double whammy of stimulus. Besides, if there are tax cuts and an interest rate cut, isnit it possible that inflation will rear its ugly head again? This is a big, weird, vicious circle that some on Wall Street are having to hire contortionists to figure out for them.
In the meanwhile, tech stocks were mixed today. Most of the tech news hitting the streets centered around Ericsson exiting the cell phone market and PMC Sierra issuing a profit warning. Shares of PMC Sierra fell by a whopping 22.8% today in more than 4 times the normal volume. The stocks we track, including Apple, closed mixed today. Apple closed slightly lower on no real news.
Apple closed at 19 9/16, down 3/8 (-1.88%) on volume of 8,620,900 shares trading hands.
The Nasdaq closed at 2781.30, a gain of 27.02 (+0.98%).
The Dow closed at 10659.98, off by 69.54 (-0.65%).
The S&P 500 closed at 1354.95, down 2.56 (-0.19%).
Akamai regained an eighth of a point to close at 29 3/4, a gain of 1/8 (+0.42%) on strong volume of 6,096,700 shares trading hands. Apple is a major shareholder of Akamai.
Adobe closed higher at 58 1/16, a gain of 1 (+1.75%) on light volume of 2,513,400 shares trading hands.
IBM tacked on 3% today and closed at 114 3/16, a gain of 3 7/16 (+3.10%) on volume of 9,089,100 shares trading hands.
Motorola closed slightly higher at 22 9/16, a gain of 1/16 (+0.28%) on very light volume of 7,246,200 shares trading hands.
Earthlink will be announcing earnings on January 30th. The stock closed at 8 7/16, off by 1/32 (-0.37%) on volume of 938,900 shares trading hands.
Gateway closed at 20.77, a gain of 0.27 (+1.32%) on volume of 2,932,900 shares trading hands.
Dell closed at 26 1/2, up 1/16 (+0.24%) on light volume of 28,116,400 shares trading hands.
Hewlett Packard went nowhere fast today and closed at 34 7/16, unchanged, on light volume of 5,331,800 shares trading hands.
Intel closed at 35 7/8, a strong gain of 1 3/8 (+3.99%), on volume of 48,057,700 shares trading hands.
Microsoft said they were the victims of a Denial of Service attack on Thursday and that was why their servers were MIA. The stock posted a strong gain and closed at 64, up 2 3/16 (+3.54%) on volume of 46,539,100 shares trading hands.
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 updated Apple Stock Watch Special Report.