Earnings Disappoint, Then Excite
As if the stock markets didn’t have enough troubling them right now, with the post Martin Luther King holiday declines in the major averages despite two days of rallies, several key components began reporting quarterly earnings. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), the maker of iPods and Macintosh computers, earned $1.58 billion for its fiscal first quarter, or $1.76 a share on revenue of $9.6 billion. For the equivalent quarter last year, Apple’s earnings were $1.14 per share, with net income of $1 billion on $7.12 billion in sales. Although this beat analysts’ estimates by 13-14 cents per share, Apple shares were down…