Market Wrap: Apple Bests Market; Employee Thinks Goldman Stinks; U.K. Outlook Lowered; 4G Expansion in Effect

Market wrap-up for March 14th

End of the Day: Dow Jones up 16.4 to 13,194.10; Nasdaq: up 0.9 to 3,040.73; S&P 500 down 1.7 to 1,394.28

The following is a brief summary of events moving markets today:

• One a day..: Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) shares ripped to new highs Wednesday amid flat markets following a slew of price target bumps over the last 24 hours. One notable call today came from Morgan Stanley, which raised its target from $515 to $720, but made a bull case for Apple to be the first trillion dollar company (price target of $960).
  
  Morgan Stanley thinks the Street and investors are still underestimating Apple's earnings potential. There are several drivers to upside in the new Morgan Stanley bull case, including: "1) enterprise tablet adoption combined with demand upside from lower priced iPad; 2) strong upgrade cycle to LTE (Long Term Evolution) capable iPhone starting later this year; 3) emerging market iPhone (plus iPad, Mac) growth driven by new carriers. China Mobile alone could add more incremental iPhone shipments than the Street models in total for CY13; 4) margin upside from lower ASP declines, increased mix of mobile devices and recent capital investments."
  
  For more color on the call, click here.
  
  Apple ended the session up 3.8 percent, or $21.48, to $579.58, but reached $594.72 intraday. For perspective, that's about $20 billion of market cap, or 2/3 of Dell (Nasdaq: DELL). In one day.
  
  
• Well, one employee had a rough Wednesday: Goldman Sachs' (NYSE: GS) Greg Smith, former executive director and head of the firm's United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, wrote an op-ed of the NY Times berating the disintegrating culture at the firm.
  
  In the rogue piece, Smith said after nearly 12 years at the firm he can now say the environment at the firm "is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it."
  
  For more, click here.
  
  
• Fitch Ratings has affirmed the United Kingdom's (UK) sovereign ratings as follows:
  • Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) affirmed at 'AAA'
    
  • Long-term local currency IDR affirmed at 'AAA'
    
  • Country Ceiling affirmed at 'AAA'
    
  • Short-term foreign currency rating affirmed at 'F1+'
  The Outlooks on the Long-term IDRs have been revised from Stable to Negative.
  
  
• Expanding the next-generation: Cricket Communications, Inc., of Leap Wireless (Nasdaq: LEAP), and Clearwire Corp (Nasdaq: CLWR) announced earlier they have entered into a five-year wholesale agreement. With the agreement, Cricket will become the second operator to have signed on to leverage Clearwire's forthcoming LTE Advanced-ready network, which will provide capacity off-load services to supplement Cricket's own LTE network. Cricket currently plans to deploy LTE across approximately two-thirds of its current network footprint over the next two to three years and to cover up to approximately 25 million POPs with LTE network technology in 2012.
  
  
• Tweet, tweet, inflation, tweet, tweet, tweet, foreseeable future, tweet, chirp, stable economic environment: Bernanke & Co. want to make the Fed a little more transparent, and have ventured the way of Twitter to do so. To follow the Federal Reserve's tweets, click here. To following Streetinsider.com, click here.

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