Jim Van Meerten's  Instablog

Today Apple (AAPL) stores across the country will be closed around 10AM so that store employees can watch the memorial service for Steve Jobs live.  Never since the days of Ford and Edison has a company been so tied to the image of the founder.  There is one big question on all investor's minds:  Can the company continue to innovate in the future as well as it has in the past?  Over the last 25 year the stocks price has grown 13, 076% and some are predicting it will go on.  The monthly price graph of the last 7 1/2 years provided by Barchart shows the momentum:

Apple Inc.(AAPL) , together with subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and markets personal computers, mobile communication and media devices, and portable digital music players, as well as sells related software, services, peripherals, networking solutions, and third-party digital content and applications worldwide. The company sells its products worldwide through its online stores, retail stores, direct sales force, third-party wholesalers, resellers, and value-added resellers. 

In addition, it sells third-party Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iPod compatible products, including application software, printers, storage devices, speakers, headphones, and other accessories and peripherals through its online and retail stores; and digital content and applications through the iTunes Store. 

The company sells its products to consumer, small and mid-sized business, education, enterprise, government, and creative markets. As of September 25, 2010, it had 317 retail stores, including 233 stores in the United States and 84 stores internationally. The company, formerly known as Apple Computer, Inc., was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Cupertino, California. (Yahoo Finance profile)

Factors to consider:

Barchart technical indicators:

• 96% Barchart technical price momentum buy signal
• Trend Spotter technical buy signal
• Trading above its 20, 50 and 100 day moving averages
• Trading up in 3 of the last 5 trading session and up 5.48%
• 32.78% price gain in the last 12 months and only1.05% off its 1 year high
• Relative Strength Index 66.81% and rising
• Barchart computes a technical support level at 412.19
• Recently traded at 422.24 with a 50 day moving average of 387.24

APPL is a member of the SIC 3571 Electronic Computer sector and some of the other members have also has positive price movement in the past year with Teradata (TDC) up 59%, Super Micro Computers (SMCI) up 39%, Silicon Graphics (SGI) up 64% and Dell (DELL) up 13%:

Summary:  Apple (AAPL) has enjoyed great success and I predict that Steve Jobs left the company in good hands.  The new products like the iPhone 4S and the others in the pipeline will continue to attract the cult following that have paid premium dollar of their products in the past.  If the numbers projected are made investors could still see an annual return in the 21% - 23% range for at least the next 5 years.