Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) may have already unleashed its iPad and already disclosed its first day sales of more than 300,000 iPad units.  We have already seen many analyst calls this morning.  We are focusing more on price targets here rather than  on projected iPad sales because there are of course many other moving parts at Apple.

According to Thomson Reuters, Barclays kept its price target unchanged at $285 and Susquehanna raised its price target to $275 from $260… Thomas Weisel raised its target up to $280 from $270.

J.P. Morgan maintained an ‘Overweight’ rating but raised the price target to $305 from $240…

Kaufman Bros. maintained a Buy rating, but hiked the price target to $295 from $253…

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Muster raised his price target to $289.00 from $280.00 and his figure was 600,000 to 700,000 in sales during the first 24 hours.  This 300,000 units in the first day is impressive and would have been far better had Gene Munster not set such a high expectation with his call for 600,000 to 700,000 units over the first 24 hours over the weekend.

Last week, we also saw that Apple was started as Outperform at BNP Paribas in overseas coverage.

There have been other calls out there from other firms as well, but we are looking mostly at the firms recognized by name.

Apple shares are now up 0.65% at $237.54 on 13 million shares, but shares had been negative on the day.

The stock options trading is where the action has been on a stealth basis as traders use out of the money calls and puts to gain exposure for upside and downside movement.  After less than two hours in the April-2010 contracts, we have seen 16,514 contracts of the $240 CALLS and 10,186 contracts of the $250 CALLS.  We have also seen 14,540 contracts of the $230 PUTS trade hands…. more options will come on throughout the day.

Jon C. Ogg

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