by , 5:40 PM EST, February 22nd, 2001
This had two influences on the markets. On the one hand, this report makes it less likely that the Fed will lower interest rates, something that Wall Street is very keen on seeing. On the other hand, it raises hope for a "soft landing" for the current economic slowdown, easing fears of an all-out recession. Those conflicting issues played themselves out in the markets today as both major indexes fell sharply and battled back to mixed results between the major indexes by the closing. Tech stocks were mixed, and the Nasdaq closed lower. The Dow battled back from a 154 point loss to close just a tad higher.
Sun Microsytems issued lowered guidance for the current quarter in an after hours conference call. After hours trading was halted. The company said that growth will come in between 10-13%, while the Street had been expecting 3rd quarter growth to come in at 30%. Look for this to have a negative impact on hardware stocks, if not the entire tech sector, in Friday's session. It could get ugly. Sun's stock traded higher before the bell in heavy volume. SUNW closed at 20 13/16, up 1 3/16 (+6.05%) on heavy volume of 98,468,600
In the meanwhile, shares in Apple opened over 19, above yesterday's close. By 10:20 AM (Eastern), however, the stock had plunged to 18. AAPL slowly battled its way back to yesterday's closing price and spent the rest of the afternoon dipping up and down over that line. The stock closed lower by the end of that day, trading in moderate volume. The day's range was 18 - 19 3/8. Apple's product announcements from yesterday evening garnered a few headlines from mainstream outlets such as C|Net, the San Francisco Chronicle, and ZDNet, The Wall Street Journal also offered a straight-ahead rework of the company's press releases. No one outside the Mac community (and the PC gaming community, but we'll talk more about that tomorrow) seems to have noticed that the GeForce3 will be coming to the Mac first. That's the most important news to come out of MACWORLD Tokyo, but again, Wall Street didn't seem to care.
Apple closed at 18 13/16, down 1/16 (-0.33%) on volume of 7,714,500 shares trading hands.
The Nasdaq closed at 2244.96, down 23.98 (-1.06%) on volume of 2,473,740,000 shares trading hands.
The Dow closed at 10526.81, just higher by 0.23 (0.00%) on volume of 1,354,947,000 shares trading hands.
The S&P 500 joined the Nasdaq in the loser's circle to close at 1252.67, down 2.60 (-0.21%).
Akamai announced a new deal with Loudcloud to enhance each other's technology offerings. Akamai closed at 17, a loss of 15/16 (-5.23%) on strong volume of 3,399,700 shares trading hands. Apple is a large shareholder of Akamai.
Adobe swung wildly today, but ended the day with a gain. ADBE closed at 30 7/16, a gain of 3/8 (+1.25%) on heavy volume of 15,463,500 shares trading hands.
IBM regained half of yesterday's losses to close at 108.9, a gain of 1.39 (+1.29%) on strong volume of 11,664,300 shares trading hands.
Motorola was hit by concerns for the cellular market, but ended the day just slightly lower. MOT closed at 17.29, a loss of 0.04 (-0.23%) on volume of 14,397,800 shares trading hands.
Earthlink closed at 8 5/8, a loss of 1/8 (-1.43%) on volume of 2,487,100 shares trading hands.
Gateway closed at 17.58, a loss of 0.67 (-3.67%) on light volume of 2,552,800 shares trading hands.
Dell closed at 21 15/16, a strong gain of 1 5/16 (+6.36%) on volume of 31,990,100 shares trading hands.
Hewlett Packard closed at 29.77, a loss of 0.24 (-0.80%) on volume of 10,498,100 shares trading hands.
Intel closed at 30, down 3/4 (-2.44%) on strong volume of 58,491,600 shares trading hands.
Microsoft closed at 55 3/16, a loss of 1 1/16 (-1.89%) on strong volume of 50,376,300 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 Apple's stock activity, visit our updated Apple Stock Watch Special Report. You can also check out our Apple Financial Boards, a new moderated forum for Apple Investors and people who are interested in Apple's financial dealings.