Apple Shares Rebound With News Of Jobs's Ailment

Apple's announcement this morning that founder and chief executive Steve Jobs has a hormone imbalance have sent shares of the computer and gadget-maker up more than 4 percent.

If this seems odd, it's because Apple has finally come forth with some news about the health of its weight-losing and increasingly less-public chief.

Jobs, who is a pancreatic cancer-survivor, is more personally linked to the fortunes of his company than almost any chief executive in America. Unlike at many other companies where CEOs are relatively interchangeable, Jobs is more than a manager -- he is an innovator and a market-mover.

As such, Apple's stock has looked like a fever chart of the speculation on Jobs's health.

After starting 2008 trading at about $180 per share, shares of Apple dipped to $119 per share in the spring, rose back over $180 in the summer and then began their slow decline as Jobs became less and less visible in public and said in December he would skip this year's Macworld convention, which starts tomorrow.

At midday today, shares of Apple are trading at about $95 per share.

-- Frank Ahrens
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