Apple Stock Price Touches $400 During Standard Trading

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

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Doctor Q

46 months ago

Note to self: buy Apple stock in the 1980s.

Rating: 13 Votes

Votekinky06

46 months ago

Man, hindsight's a bitch.

Rating: 7 Votes

King Flamez1

46 months ago

wow. and to think that Apple was almost bankrupt just 15 years ago

Rating: 5 Votes

wilhoitm

46 months ago

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

Rating: 4 Votes

minik

46 months ago

Back in 1999, I told my dad to buy some Apple stock. He never appreciated Apple/Steve Jobs, so he ignored me and bought some other stocks. A day before Macworld 2009, I decided to jump in as my first experience on the stock market. :cool:

Rating: 3 Votes

longofest

46 months ago

Even if Apple shares top out at $430 and you get in at $400, you can make $30 a share (7.5% ROI).

That's assuming you can purchase the stock for free. Most brokerages have pesky buy/sell fees that would cut into that performance a bit.

Rating: 2 Votes

dukebound85

46 months ago

I remember telling my parents to buy AAPL stock when I was like 15 when it was $80 dollars a share. iTunes was a year old and just bought my 3rd generation iPod 15gb. But they waited too long and never did till like 3 years ago...True story

You realize iTunes have been out since before OSX right? more than 11 years ago (and Apple then was no where near 80)....or did you mean the ITMS?

Rating: 2 Votes

pyro008

46 months ago

Buying stock in a company because you like their products is not exactly the most sound financial advice.

Rating: 1 Votes

jlgolson

46 months ago

When the economy gets better I am hoping for a 5 to 1 or 4 to 1 stock split!

Why would a split matter?

Rating: 1 Votes

kk08053

46 months ago

Or, just buy it in Dec 1997 when it was $3.28 a share (it was a little cheaper at times in the 80s though). $10,000 invested then would be worth over $1.2 million now!

Actually, considering that the stock has split twice since then it would actually be worth closer to $5 million....ugh i almost pulled the trigger on buying about 1000 shares a little after Jobs came back to the company but i chickened out.

Rating: 1 Votes

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