Apple's common stock barely responds to the death of Steve Jobs

When the opening bell rang at 9:30 am New York time this morning, investors had their first chance to make buy/sell decisions on Apple's common stock since the untimely death of company co-founder Steve Jobs yesterday afternoon. Apple did not announce Jobs' passing on Wednesday until after the markets had closed for the day.

On Thursday, Apple traded in a range between  $371.80 and $384.78 before closing at $377.37 for a loss of 88 cents on the day despite a 1.88% gain for NASDAQ. Volume was approximately 27% above average with 28 million shares changing hands. For the last 52 weeks, Apple has traded as high as $422.86 and as low as $285.26. At one point when the stock was above $400, Apple had the largest market capitalization (share price times number of shares outstanding) of all publicly traded companies in the world, beating out Exxon Mobile by a hair. Since then, the oil and gas company has reclaimed the top spot.

Apple went public on December 12th 1980, raising the most money in a IPO since Ford went public in 1956 and instantly created 300 millionaires on paper-the most ever created from a single IPO at the time. There is speculation that as a high profile stock, Apple could soon be asked to join the 30 stock Dow Jones Industrial Average.

source: Yahoo