In a year in which tech companies have struggled to stay alive, Apple’s stock has doubled.

In January of 2009, Apple stock was priced at $78. Last week, it closed at $184. Also late last week, three major investment firms elevated their expectations for Apple. On Thursday, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner increased his target price for Apple from $185 to $210, while Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig increased his target from $185 to $220. On Friday, UBS analyst Maynard Um jumped on the Apple bandwagon, and raised the bet, escalating Apple’s target price from $170 to $265.

A 236% jump in stock price from January to October would be remarkable for any company. But in the case of Apple, it happened under the most bizarre of circumstances.

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Spotify, the European peer-to-peer music streaming service that gives its users access to millions of songs for free is gaining more buzz every day. The service already has millions of users and has managed what many thought was impossible: it got the big record labels on board a free service and gained access to their music libraries.

Spotify has deals with Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music, EMI and Merlin. The first four of these are often called the “big four” record companies.

How did Spotify pull this off?

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There has been a lot of talk this week about the Dow Jones stock index dipping below 8000 for the first time since 2003.

Now let’s put this into perspective with a very telling old ad.

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Apple must be doing a lot of things right lately. Their stock has increased by 1384% in the last five years. Microsoft’s stock, on the other hand, has decreased by 2.45%. You can see Apple’s stock growth in red below, and Microsoft’s in blue. (From Google Finance.) Of course, these are percentage increases and are [...]

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