Photo: Business Insider
If you based your assessment of Apple’s future prospects on analyst reports and polls, you’d be upping your medication today while reading three separate sets of numbers.
Fortune reports that Apple tops the ‘most admired companies‘ list for the seventh time in a row, with Amazon and Google the runners-up. The charts are based on polling directors, executives and analysts in the USA’s largest companies.
The same source cites a Morgan Stanley investment note showing that the 30 largest institutional investors, who between them hold at least 30 percent of the shares on the market, have been selling AAPL, with their holdings at a record low …
Citi Research (via CNET), meantime, says that tablets are hitting saturation point earlier than expected, with the 140 percent growth witnessed in the early part of 2013 expected to fall to around 20 percent in the course of this year, and that market leader Apple will be hit harder than most.
All of which comes a week after it was revealed that AAPL is the favorite stock of 21 billionaire investors.
9to5Mac readers may prefer to reach their own conclusions.
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My theory is that AAPL is the safe haven, so institutions invest there when the overall market is flat or dropping. When the market rises, as it has been, institutions take out to invest elsewhere. This role used to be played by treasuries, but interest rate is effectively zero and AAPL is essentially printing money. The upward pressure is still within AAPL, but the redistribution masks it. Logic says a boom is coming.
Interesting view. Hadn’t really thought about the safe haven aspect. The emotional side of me says “Awesome, the less Wallstreet money in AAPL the better,” but the logical side knows it affects the public perception when it happens…oh well.
I just can’t believe the analysts can’t see their way to project how much over 1/2 billion loyal well healed iTunes buyer’s credit cards are worth. It boggles the mind. Apple WILL monetize this most coveted group of consumers and when they do it will usher in an entirely new way to value Apple’s stock with a recurring revenue stream in the billions.
When you subtract cash, Google is worth more than Apple by market cap. Apple’s profit last quarter was very close to Google’s revenue last quarter. How messed up is wall street? Well FB is 1/3 the market cap of Apple with a small fraction of the profit.
I have been watching Fisku’s iOS tracker since the rollout of iPhone 5s and iPhone5c. Based on the run rates of adoption since release 158 days ago of ~0.1% per day, those two will make up 25% of all active iPhones by March 15th . Considering the size of the iPhone community, that is a huge number, and speaks well of the sell-through rate of the 5s and the 5c. They are not sitting in inventory someplace….
http://www.fiksu.com/iOS-7-iPhone-5s-5c-Usage-Tracker
Fisku’s embedded app tracking tools are also reporting on iPad adoption rates. The retina iPad Mini has only been out 105 days, and the new iPad Air for 116 days. As of today, those two new iPads have attained a 12.5% usage rank among all iPads in use. This is also a run rate of over 0.1% a day adoption rate, and bodes well for their reception in the iDevices community.
So much for “just the same old thing”.
“The Penalty Of Leadership”. It’s a great marketing ad by Cadillac from 1915. It’s a great read, and I think it’s about as close to an accurate psych profile of these so-called analysts that we can get.
It’s the same reason Samsung can implement old junk fingerprint scanners into their flagship device without the same backlash as when Apple first implemented a reliable and trustworthy reader 6 months ago.
And now the Apple Schizophrenia is so widely known, it has to be factored into the stock value. It’s a legitimate risk at this point. You have a bunch of idiot investors staring at eachother wondering how the other “feels”, because it obviously has nothing to do with rational numbers, and simply taking the safe route and selling.
And thus the other problem, when a dozen banks on Wall st wield enough power to determine the stock value of the most profitable company in the world, it’s a gamed system no better than Vegas. What else do you expect?
If Apple is still maintaining over $500 a share with “low” institutional investment, just wait until a new product is released, everyone cr@ps their pants and tries to get back into Apple. I feel pretty good reading this. The share price is remaining high. The customer base is loyal. The amount of institutional investors has room to grow, driving price up later. The market is watering at the mouth for a new Apple product. Now it just needs to be delivered.
There is another way to look at this. If the large institutional investors are selling, who is buying? Some of the billionaires, no doubt. But the rest is likely individuals, like myself.
It is said that Henry Ford was taking the elevator to his penthouse one day in 1929, and the operator said, “Mr. Ford, a friend of mine who knows a lot about stocks recommended that I buy shares in X, Y, and Z. You are a person with a lot of money. You should seize this opportunity.” Ford thanked him, and as soon as he got into his penthouse, he called his broker, and told him to sell everything. He explained afterwards: “If the elevator operator recommends buying, you should have sold long ago.”
Are you and I are the elevator operators of today?
Many, possibly the majority of investors operate using herd mentality. “The guy beside me is running, so I guess I should too.” Apple’s stock price has nothing to do with its actual value and success as a company. Investors can be made to stampede either towards or away from Apple by articles released by “analysts”, many of which couldn’t run a business to save their lives. Apple is the richest and most successful company in the world, yet their stock price is going down based on “analysts'” advice. If you believe “analysts” Apple should have been dead decades ago. The stock market is gambling pure and simple. The average investor is panicky and easily spooked.
The truth of the matter is that to make money, write a bad article about Apple to drive the price down. Then buy Apple shares at the lower price. Then write how great Apple is doing and watch the price go up. Sell the stocks at the higher price and you’ve made a fortune with a couple of magazine articles.
Th issue is that retail investors take their cues from headline stocks like NFLX, TSLA, and FB. Once these collapse they will panic sell and drive down the price of AAPL as well. I would love to be long AAPL now, based on its own merits and valuation. Unfortunately, any investor at these levels needs to be ready to take a lot of pain given the bloated valuation of some of these other stocks and the effect they can have on the overall market.
Apple routinely dies because fanboys think they’re doing it a service by defending every horrible decision that’s made on its behalf. Realists like Steve Jobs and his closest friends are crapped on 24/7 because they’re willing to call a spade a spade. Apple is being dismantled people. Google is here to take all. Chrome will be your browser, your OS, and Android will eventually be folded in just as iOS is being folded into OS X at some point. Google will most likely acquire Apple in 10 years or so, and Tim Cook will get a nice shiny award for ushering in the plan he was hired to carry out. Historians will lament about how none of this was intentional and cite the many “bad decisions” (namely that Tim Cook is carrying out now, and fanboys are defending) that were made the eroded its once glorious reign on computers. Apple has turned into the 1984 it promised never to be. The irony from big Fidelity Investment (also a big owner in IBM that was outright threaten by Steve back in the 80s) has finally won, thus showing humanity, there is no place in the world for original destiny. The Rollerballer has been made the bitch of the Executives who control him. Apple will have to drop a zero point energy motor to save itself at this late point. They have willfully killed the desktop computer, lost their innovative edge on mobile and tablet, and been unable to get the Apple TV negotiations completed as necessary to realize Steve’s last vision. Apple’s over priced machines and industrial arrogance has finally caught up. Only Steve could push people around, because he endearingly offered them something in return they couldn’t resist. Tim Cook offers nothing. He’s an ivy league pencil pusher with no technology or design abilities; the perfect guy to take Apple into the grave. You’re only hope at this point is to get critical like the Wired magazine of 1997. Anything less, and you’re an accomplice to their demise.
I sincerely hope you are wrong. I have US anti-trust committee to back me up :-I
If Carl iCahn is long $AAPL, I’m long $AAPL as well… Only time will tell!
We get it. We got it. Laptops, desktops, phones, flashlights, video cameras, still cameras, music containers, pocket levels, compasses, locators—everybody has enough, already. What’s missing?
Accessories? Watches? Wireless mics? Naa. Bigger than that. Game-changinly big.
Digital assistants with Major Impact.
Watson in your pocket. Siri or Ciril on steroids. Personality-driven attendants that sit in your pocket, observe what you see, record anything and everything important, do your bidding and coordinate your life, track your promises, remind you of what’s next, what’s important and what’s forgotten.
The whisper in your ear that reminds you that thou art mortal, Caesar. And how much is in the bank this instant, and where you left your car, and that your sister’s birthday is next Wednesday, and what to say next to that delicious blond.
You’re only human. You need Helpnology.
Apple again topped Fortune’s annual list of the “World’s Most Admired Companies”, claiming the title for the seventh year in a row. Apple’s ranking on the list was followed by Amazon, Google. I’d like to work for them and they produce awesome products.