The big day finally arrived, and Apple introduced the iPad this morning (yeah, you heard that already).

Strangely, during the course of the much-anticipated event, Apple’s stock went down, as observed by many. And then, Apple finally got around to talking about pricing.

Chief executive Steve Jobs took the stage, and wowed the crowd (and the world) by saying that the starting price for the iPad was a stunning $499.

Guess what happened next?

At the time of this writing, the stock spiked +3.61.

We wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit an all-time high today.

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