Apple shares hit an all-time intraday high on Wednesday, rising 6.21% to $352.52 by midafternoon European time, a day after a selloff triggered by the company’s margin guidance. The intraday peak of $354.33 set a new all-time intraday record, topping the previous high of $351.73 from October 23. Tuesday’s close was $331.90. At these prices, Cupertino’s market capitalization is back above $5 trillion.
Twenty-four hours earlier the picture was the opposite. On Tuesday, November 3, 2026, the stock fell as much as 4% during the session before closing down 1.90%. Investors fixed on guidance for gross margin in the December quarter, held back by rising memory chip prices, rather than on the quarter just reported.
The company has announced nothing since. The push is coming from the market as a whole. Wall Street is celebrating the outcome of the midterm elections, with Democrats taking control of Congress according to Associated Press projections, and much of Big Tech is rallying. There is also the rebound from the post-earnings drop, the same move visible today in Amazon, which is recovering strongly after its own decline.
A record fiscal year
The results were the first with John Ternus as chief executive (he has been at the helm since September 1; here is who the new Apple CEO is and what he earns). They came out on Monday, November 2, 2026, after the close of Wall Street. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, ended September 26, revenue grew 12% to $114.5 billion, against the roughly $113.5 billion analysts expected according to Bloomberg. Earnings per share rose 14% to $2.10, helped by 5 cents from tariff refunds, which are also worth about one point of gross margin, at 47.9%. The full tables are in the results release published by Apple.
The driver was again the iPhone, with $57.6 billion in sales, up 17.5% and never so high in a September quarter. Macs also did well, up 23.7%, while services hit an all-time high of $31.6 billion. iPad and wearables slipped. In Greater China revenue rose 21% but came in below analyst estimates.
For the full fiscal year, revenue reached $478.8 billion (+15%) and earnings per share $8.98 (+20%). Ternus called it «our best fiscal year ever». Chief financial officer Kevan Parekh said the group generated $28 billion in operating cash flow in the quarter, «which allowed us to return 28 to shareholders». The board declared a dividend of $0.27 per share, payable on November 16 to shareholders of record as of November 12.
The memory problem
What cooled buying on Tuesday was the December-quarter guidance delivered on the conference call. Apple expects revenue growth of 7% to 10%, a range that factors in supply constraints and still sits above analyst expectations of about 6%, according to LSEG. Gross margin, however, is seen at 45% to 46%, below September’s 47.9%, because of rising memory prices and costs tied to the launch of the new AI-based Siri. Expected services growth also disappointed, at 8% to 9%, below analyst estimates.
«What we’re seeing right now on memory prices is unprecedented», Ternus said, according to Reuters, warning that costs will rise further in December. AI data centers are fighting over the chips, and Apple has raised its manufacturing purchase commitments by $33 billion, to $89.7 billion. The stock, the agency noted, trades at nearly 35 times expected earnings over the next twelve months, a valuation that leaves little room for disappointment.
The technical picture
Today’s gain is worth about six times the stock’s average daily volatility of 1.08%. It pushes the price above the upper Bollinger band, which stood at $350.66 at Tuesday’s close: a sign of strength that in the short term can also signal an overextension. On the same data, the 20-, 50- and 200-session moving averages were at $342.21, $334.23 and $298.26, all well below today’s quotes.
Confirmation at the close is still missing. The closing record remains the $348.91 set on October 29, and the current price is little more than three dollars away. The real test will come with the holiday-quarter results, when it will become clear how much memory costs have eaten into margins.
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Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Ufficio Studi Money.it on November 04, 2026 as «Azioni Apple, nuovo massimo storico intraday: il mercato rilegge la prima trimestrale di Ternus». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.