See, what'd we tell you? The mysteries of the stock market and its behavior may be far beyond our mortal ken, but evidently Wall Street lapped up Apple's Q3 earnings news like a big bowl of Liquid Enthusiasm. AAPL jumped a massive $3.35 today, marking an 11.33% gain that puts the stock back up near its highest levels in four years (from which it had tumbled after that whole "whoops, we kinda ran out of iMacs" thing). Since this puts Apple up more than 40% from its share price six months ago (while the NASDAQ as a whole is down 10%), we think the company's got plenty of reasons to be feeling good these days... and most of them make a sound commonly onomatopoeized as "ka-ching."

Of course, as a general rule, the buyers themselves are sheep, and today's stock spike wouldn't have been nearly so pronounced if the investors hadn't had a little nudge from the suits. CBS MarketWatch reports that AAPL racked up two, count 'em, two analyst upgrades today. First Albany upped its rating on Apple from "Neutral" to "Buy," setting a price target of $35 and stating that the firm has "greater confidence in Apple's ability to sustain revenue growth and capitalize on operating leverage in its model." And Bear Stearns bumped AAPL from "Peer Perform" to "Outperform" (which we're assured is a step up-- darn newfangled WallStreetSpeak), citing "more consistent growth and execution"; Bear Stearns's new year-end price target for AAPL shares is $36.50. All good stuff, especially since Joel Wagonfeld and Andrew Neff (the analysts who track Apple for First Albany and Bear Stearns, respectively) are the only two analysts with five-star ratings for accuracy according to StarMine when it comes to predicting AAPL's behavior.

Oh, but wait-- apparently there's more! According to Yahoo! Finance, Apple scored a third upgrade today: some firm called Fulcrum which provides research analysis to "a wide range of institutional investors" ("We do not do business with the general public"-- well, aren't you special) upgraded its rating on AAPL from "Neutral" to "Buy." We have no idea how much influence, if any, Fulcrum may have, but obviously every little bit counts.

As of today, analysts covering Apple have changed their ratings eight times this year-- and every single one of those changes was an upgrade, not a downgrade. Dare we suggest that Apple might be entering a new period of maximum Reality Distortion Field penetration on Wall Street? Fingers crossed, people, because the last time that happened in 1999, AAPL's value had more than quadrupled in value before it finally drove off a cliff the following year. And if history is repeating, maybe this time around we'll even be smart enough to jump from the vehicle before it goes plummeting into the sea.