Apple day
Apple is very much in the spotlight today and perhaps that's why its stock is a positive oasis in the predictable desert of red on our HEXUS.sharewatch list.
The list compares prices at 9am today with those last Wednesday morning, just after the UK version of the bank bailout was unveiled. Prices were dropping rapidly at that time and, as you can see from today's chart, continued to do so.
The sole exception is Apple, which has actually managed to gain 8.5 percent in the past five days, while the Dow dropped a further ten percent and the NASDAQ, where Apple is listed, dropping by six percent.
This gain happened entirely on Friday 10th October when, as ever, the media got itself in a lather in anticipation of the next Apple launch. Coincidentally, or not, this was also the day Apple revealed possible problems with NVIDIA graphics in its MacBook Pros.
Even in the context of all the finance sector related craziness we've had to endure recently, Apple's stock has been plummeting. In mid-August of this year Apple's share price was around $180, by last week it was half that.
Because Apple's products are viewed primarily as luxury items it has been particularly exposed to the global economic woes. The assumption is that if everyone's skint, the last thing they're going to do is shell out a grand and a half on a Mac notebook, when they can get a netbook for £200.
