Apple Thoughts: What Price Drop? Apple Stocks Gain and Get 'Strong Buy' Rating

"Investors appeared to enjoy Apple's announcement Wednesday of a new iPod shuffle that can speak the names of songs -- Standard & Poors liked it so much, the firm issued a note iterating its "Strong Buy" rating on AAPL . Shares in the stock traded higher during the Wednesday afternoon session, at US$93.85 per share, a gain of $5.2225 (+5.89%)."

This on the heels of the gain yesterday for Apple, as well as some news that Apple may be in line to replace GM and Citi on the list of Dow Blue Chip stocks that make up the basis for the Dow Industrial Average. Some of the other companies being tossed around are Google, Goldman Sachs, Visa and Cisco. The blue chips are supposed to be the "heavy hitters" of the stock market, the 30 largest and most widely held companies. Having a share price drop close to $1.00 USD like Citi has doesn't exactly give it much market power, and stocks that drop below $1.00 USD usually get delisted from their exchange.

This would be quite the feather in the cap of Apple, the last time companies were added was in 2008 when Bank of America, Chevron and Kraft Foods were added.