Hey, we at AtAT may not know much when it comes to the stock market, but if you watch a particular stock long enough, certain truths become self-evident to even the most clueless observer. For one thing, apparently not all analysts carry the same weight. If you've been following Apple's stock performance at all over the past year or two, you're probably aware that in that time frame analysts have been tripping all over themselves to upgrade their ratings on AAPL. For a while there it was apparently the hot new trend on Wall Street: rate Apple a "Buy" because everyone else sure seemed to be doing it. And why not? The company's a lean, mean, fightin' machine. Everything's coming up roses in Cupertino, and those roses are candy-colored and translucent, to boot.

And yet, the Street's reaction varied considerably from upgrade to upgrade. Usually AAPL's price would rise a few points, and maybe level off a bit over the next day or so. Sometimes there'd be a more dramatic spike, but those typically leveled off more, and sooner. Overall, of course, anyone investing in Apple is making some serious bank, because those incremental price increases really stack up; until Wednesday, AAPL's price had tripled in a year. How could anyone not love that performance? (Unless, say, you passed up a chance to buy big at $13...)

And then the overdrive kicked in. We were working hard, oblivious to the market all day long, when faithful viewer Matt Steinecker wrote in to tell us that AAPL was up over fifteen points. Ever skeptical, we pulled up a ticker-- and lo and behold, Matt was right: AAPL closed at just over $130. (Our apologies to Matt for our unspoken gut reaction to his missive; having confirmed his news to be correct, we can now state with a high degree of confidence that he's almost definitely not on crack.) And what sparked this massive run-up of AAPL's price? Not an announcement of a 17-inch iMac, not rumors that Steve Jobs is selling off Pixar to run Apple full-time, not even a press release by Imatec's Hanoch Shalit saying "What was I thinking?" The monumental event that raised Apple's stock price to a new all-time high was one analyst basically saying that Apple's probably going to have a good quarter.

Yeah, that's about it. According to a Reuters article, Kevin McCarthy of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette issued a report forecasting a "strong March quarter." Heck, the guy didn't even upgrade his rating on AAPL or up his estimates for Apple's end-of-quarter results. All he did was point out that retailers report brisk sales for Apple's new products, including the faster G4s, the Pismo PowerBooks, and the rev. B iBooks. He also mentioned that EarthLink's picking up lots of new Mac subscribers, too, which translates into a cut of the proceeds going to Apple. Bickety-bam, just like that, AAPL's up over $130. Can it possibly last? (Update: Probably not-- at broadcast time on Thursday, AAPL was down about seven points. Don'tcha just love this game?)