Apple's stock price today briefly touched $400/share during standard trading hours for the first time ever, before falling back slightly to close at $398.50 today. The 52-week, and thus all-time, high is currently $400.00 exactly.
The most likely cause for the 'bounce' off the $400 ceiling are sell limit orders -- semi-permanent orders to sell a certain stock at a certain price. In this case, the $400 level is psychologically significant and a comparatively high number of limit orders would execute at this price.
As a result, the stock hits $400 and "bounces" down again. It appears in the chart above that AAPL nearly breached $400 at 12:54PM and 2:22PM.
Going through the NASDAQ trading report from today, we can see this effect in action:
See pages 27, 26, and 25 (in reverse chronological order) from the 12:30 - 12:59 trading block today. We can see the trades at $399.99 and then a flurry of trades made at $400 as dozens of limit orders are executed. Thousands of shares traded hands at $400, in just three seconds, from 12:53:56PM to 12:53:59PM.
AAPL briefly broke through the $400 barrier in extended-hours trading last week, but this was the first time it touched $400 during the standard 9:30-4 trading day.
Top Rated Comments
The year is 1997.
When it comes to the state of Apple Computer...
At the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97, Michael Dell, the CEO of competitor Dell Computer added his voice to the chorus when asked what could be done to fix Apple Computer.
"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," Michael Dell said before a crowd of several thousand IT executives.
The year is 2011.
Dell market capitalization - 32.31 Billion
Apple market capitalization - 369.37 Billion