The End Of The Apple Generation

Friday saw Apple lose its reign as king of the publicly traded companies as its share price continued to plummet. It was replaced by Exxon Mobile the oil company. Apple shares dropped by 12% on Thursday and a further 2.4% on Friday. This is just the tip of the iceberg as a total drop of 37% on its share price since last September. That’s not to say profits have been affected as Apple still continues to see record profit highs. Apple announced the sale of 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPad’s in the last quarter of last year. The drop in share price is said to represent consumer sentiment in the wake of negative comments about the lack of interesting new products and features released by Apple of late. Also Apple face tough competition with the likes of Samsung who’s selection of phones supposedly cover all demographics and all pockets while Apple iPhones are very expensive in relation.

New US home sales rose less than expected in December to 369,000 units after the previous month’s rise of 385,000 units.

Stocks

US stocks rose on Friday on the back off better than expected earnings announcement for many US companies and on strengthening German business confidence data. This pushed the market makers out of their dollar views and into stock positions. The S&P rose by 0.54 per cent and the NASDAQ Index was up by 0.62%. The Institute Economic Research remarked on their German business confidence index which rose 108 points in January from the previous month, which was better than expected by 1.2 points.

Meanwhile UK GDP sinks while the GBP fell from 1.64 several weeks ago to 1.57.

Currencies

The better than expected German business Confidence helped place the EURJPY on firmer ground and together with the positive US stocks data made the USD slink against the other majors.. The EUR$ struck an 11 month high as the US$ found itself being put under some pressure at the end of the last trading week.