Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced late Wednesday that he is taking a medical leave of absence until June. In after-hours trading, Apple’s stock dropped 8 percent. After-hours trading is notably volatile and not necessarily a harbinger of what the market will do the next trading day. However, there is no doubt that investors place a high value on what Jobs brings to Apple. Many attribute Apple’s string of innovative successes (think iPod and iPhone in the recent past) to Jobs. Jobs is the face of Apple in a way few CEOs are these days. What will happen to Apple if Jobs is unable or unwilling to resume his duties this summer? Every company that is built around a dynamic leader eventually faces the day when that icon is gone. How Apple responds to this crisis of perception will say a lot about that inevitable day Jobs is no longer at the helm. Investors will be watching.

Is now the time to begin buying stocks? This question is repeated daily and the answers vary, depending on whom you talk to.

With a $1.2 trillion annual deficit facing us, some are worried that massive government spending will cause interest rates to skyrocket.

The problem facing the incoming Obama Administration is that the danger of the economy slipping further is greater than huge deficits and high interest rates down the road.

If the deficit spending can put people to work, investors may benefit in the near term as business gears up for promised public works projects.

Will this fix the economy? Unfortunately, no one knows for sure.

Thursday, the Dow closed slightly down and the Nasdaq closed slightly up.

Based on those numbers alone, you could conclude that the market was flat and not much was going on.

However, if you looked at the advance/decline numbers, you would see that on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq that about 59 percent of the stocks closed up for the day.

From a whole market perspective, it wasn’t a bad day.

This article discusses what is behind these numbers and why you should care.