AAPL

Apple stock hit new territory today as the share price closed at an all-time high of $636.34. This news comes as Apple was scheduled to pay a dividend of $2.65 per share to AAPL shareholders today. The dividend is Apple's first since December 1995.

The graph above from Yahoo Finance shows an over 6,200 percent increase in price since 1995. Apple stock is up almost 60 percent this year. Trading action on AAPL today hit an intraday high of $644 before coming back down before the close. At the peak, total market capitalization topped $600 billion.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) have reached a milestone for the year, with shares opening trading over $200 today. Although shares of the Cupertino based computer giant have crested past the $200 mark in both of the last two days, end of day trading has seen share prices retreat back below the $200 mark before closing.

Shares have risen over 60 percent since the introduction of the wildly popular iPhone at the end of June of this year. Sales of the iPhone, combined with the continuing growth of Apple's market share in the PC sales arena, have catapulted the share price of Apple's stock.

Perhaps most importantly, analyst firms remain almost unanimously optimistic about Apple's continuing growth. Almost all of the analyst firms on the street have target prices above $200, with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster leading the