NASDAQ Analyst Recommendations shows continued positive momentum for Apple Computer

For months and months NASDAQ’s “Analysts Recommendations” (a group of analyst 17 firms, recently upped to 18) for Apple Computer (AAPL) looked like this:

Strong Buy – 0
Buy – 1
Hold – 15
Underperform – 0
Sell – 1

Then a week before Jobs Macworld keynote, we reported that we had finally noticed movement on the analyst recommendations:

Strong Buy – 1
Buy – 1
Hold – 14
Underperform – 0
Sell – 1

On January 14th, in advance of Apple’s earning announcement, we reported another marked shift in the analyst recommendations for AAPL. That chart looked like this:

Strong Buy – 2
Buy – 2
Hold – 12
Underperform – 0
Sell – 1

Today, the latest chart reflects the addition of an 18th analyst firm (Needham) giving Apple a “Buy” rating:

Strong Buy – 2
Buy – 3
Hold – 12
Underperform – 0
Sell – 1

A noticeable swing to the positive for Jobs & Co. We continue to stick by our multiple-choice theory that the unnamed analyst firm still insisting on recommending “Sell” is either defunct, subject of a probe by the Attorney General, or is a victim of the ever-popular condition known as “high on crack.”

However, a new hypothesis circulating in the halls of MDN is that the firm advocating a “Sell” on Apple has been unable to email their “Strong Buy” recommendation to NASDAQ for months since their Windows boxes are “all Sobig’ed up.”

View the latest chart here.

[MDN Note: the firm recommending the “Sell” on APPL, is Smith Barney which has plenty of its own pressing problems (try to say that three times fast). The official Smith Barney reason for their “Sell” recommendation on AAPL (instituted on 9/15/2003) is “recent share price strength,” but we still like our theories better.