With Steve Jobs’ medical leave from Apple, many expected the company’s stock to get hit quite a bit — and they’d be right as shares of AAPL are down around 5% as the market opens this morning. Don’t forget that Apple is reporting its Holiday quarter earnings later today, however, and the consensus is that Apple will have the biggest and most profitable quarter ever. Apple’s earnings can and most likely will help the stock overcome the impact of Jobs’ leave from Apple, at least temporarily — as was clearly Apple’s intention with the timing of yesterday’s announcement. With Apple’s extremely solid product lineup for 2011 (as it has been rumored), we’ll have to see how the stock fares long term.
