According to Bloomberg.com, Apple's latest "bigger than bigger" slogan for the iPhone is turning out more and more apt as the company sets the record as the first US company to be worth more than $700 billion. This is the first time a US company's value has reached $700 billion.
Prices on bearish Apple contracts soared as much as 400 per cent, a rare payday for traders who have added to such positions in the options over the past month. Before Monday (US time), Apple had rallied 48 per cent in 2014 and was up 24 per cent since global equity markets bottomed in mid-October.
"I was very happy to have a day like today," Biggam, chief options strategist at TradingBlock, a brokerage firm at CBOE, said by phone. "In a stock that goes up every day, when everyone's on the wrong side of the boat, it falls a lot quicker."
Apple's retreat was mirrored in technology stocks from Tesla Motors to TripAdvisor and Facebook, and came just before the Standard & Poor's 500 Index pared a decline of 0.8 per cent after a report showed US manufacturing expanded faster than economists projected in November. Apple shares have rallied 44 per cent in 2014, the 16th biggest gain in the Nasdaq 100 Index of technology stocks.
According to research firm Canalys, thanks to the huge popularity of the latest versions of iPhone, the company was the biggest seller of handsets in the fourth quarter in China last year, something that even the late Steve Jobs could not do during his glory days.
Apple is looking to open 40 brick-and-mortar stores in China by mid-2016.
