Appleâ€™s Stock Price Stabilizes [CHARTS]

**Waqas** · August 25, 2011

Investors seem to have shrugged off Apple‘s bombshell announcement on Wednesday that Steve Jobs was resigning as CEO.

The company’s stock price, which had fallen as much as 7% in after-hours trading, was down less than 1% by mid-afternoon Thursday. But the market itself was down by the same amount.

The stability of the stock reflected both investors’ confidence in the succession plan Jobs put in place with former Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook as CEO and what has been years of preparation. Jobs took a health-related leave of absence in January 2009 and another one in January of this year. During both of those times, Cook served as interim CEO.

When Jobs took his first leave of absence in 2009, Apple stock tumbled to below $80 per share. Today, they are trading at around $374 and Apple is vying with ExxonMobil to be the largest company in the world, by market capitalization.

As the charts below show, despite Apple’s news, the stock has fared better than Microsoft’s, Google’s and the S&P 500 over the last few days.