Finance Memo

During our investment period Apple experienced several events that heavily affected the performance of our portfolio. On October 19 Apple reported its 4th quarter 2009 earnings of $1.82 per share. This beat the $1.44 analysts’ estimates by +26.4%. We believe this influenced the stock increase on Oct. 20 (up 8.9%). On October 21, Apple’s stock price was up 6.16%, the company’s 52-week high of $ 204.92, most likely due to overflow from the previous days’ earnings report as well as new product releases: the Magic Mouse and the new line of iMacs featuring brilliant LED-backlit monitors. On November 23, Apple went up 5.96%, the same day KT Corp., South Korea’s largest phone and internet company, announced it would begin offering iPhones on November 28.

Nordstrom, Google and Cisco, however, have not had any significant events in the past months that have significantly affected their stock prices. Nonetheless, some of the major events that have taken place include: Google’s agreement to acquire AdMob for $750 million in stock; the announcement of Best Buy's partnership with Google to co-market the Google Mobile App; Google’s announcement of a new hosted enterprise search product- Google Commerce Search and Google’s launch of music searches with Lala. Nordstrom approved its quarterly dividend of $0.16 per share payable on December 15 to shareholders, and Cisco announced its intent to acquire ScanSafe.


In our portfolio Apple has showed the most fluctuations over the past months due to the abovementioned events. Despite Apple’s big surges our portfolio has mirrored the direction of the market. On October 30 the Dow Jones hit a drop from the latest weak measure of consumer spending which followed economists' expectations. On November 9, the Dow Jones industrial average reached its 52-week high influenced by global assurances that stimulus policies would remain in place.

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