Wall Street's new-found love affair with Apple continues unabated. Even though we at AtAT aren't investors, we habitually check in with Apple's stock price throughout the day, since that's the official coin-operated Love Meter of Apple's relationship with the finance community. A couple of years ago Apple bottomed out at just under $13-- definitely "Cold Fish" territory. Ever since then, though, the passion's been building; Apple's rating has steadily grown with its share price and has officially just entered the "Casanova" range. For the first time ever, on Tuesday AAPL broke $100 a share, reaching a peak of $103.75 before finally settling at just under $98 after the profit-takers had a field day. That's more than triple its price a year ago. Whew... Is it warm in here, or is it just us?

Anyway, the reason for yesterday's sudden growth (stop giggling) was the latest batch in a long series of upgrades from the analyst community. First, Daniel Kunstler, a J.P. Morgan analyst, reiterated his "buy" rating on Apple and raised his target price to $115. Then Kevin McCarthy, an analyst with Donalson Lufkin & Jenrette, went whole-hog and raised his target price to a whopping $140. Those two love letters are based on confidence that Apple's first fiscal quarter numbers will be very strong: demand for Macs is stronger than ever, availability is improving steadily, and Santa's probably going to deliver a whole lot of iGifts this year. Consequently, Kunstler is estimating a profit of 92 cents per share when Apple releases its results in January, while McCarthy is predicting 90 cents. The analyst consensus is currently 89 cents per share. The gory details are all available in a Reuters article.

Wall Street analysts tripping all over themselves to say good things about Apple... Whodathunkit? And things are likely to keep getting better now that AAPL's broken that magical $100 barrier. (Remember how everybody was so excited when Apple's share price hit $30? Chump change!) We can't but wonder how long this Wall Street love affair can continue before Apple makes one of its patented bonehead moves of yore and sends everything crumbling to dust. Then again, even that earnings warning and G4 downgrade fiasco wasn't able to cool the relationship for long. Could this be "the one"? (Director's note: at broadcast time, AAPL was back over $100. Ooo la la!)