“If you bought Apple’s stock at the beginning of the year then you must feel like you hit the Mega Millions jackpot. Shares of the iPod seller are up 217 percent in 2004, making Apple far and away the biggest winner in the S&P 500. Heck, even if you bought the stock sometime this autumn, you’re probably grinning from ear to ear right now. Apple has surged almost 75 percent since the last time I wrote a bullish column about the company — and that was less than two months ago,” Paul R. La Monica writes for CNN/Money.
“Shares closed on Wednesday at $67.79, just 6 percent below their all-time high from March 2000. But can Apple keep going? Several institutional investors are starting to sell even though they still think Apple’s fundamentals are strong. And if you’re sitting on a hefty gain in Apple stock, it’s probably not a bad idea to follow suit. ‘The key to success in tech is taking some money off the table,’ said John Buckingham, manager of the Al Frank fund. ‘The lesson for investors is not to own things in black and white. There’s a happy medium. You can sell some but you don’t have to sell all of it,'” La Monica writes.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to suggest that Apple is going to have a bad quarter or that the iPod is a fad that’s about to peak. But if you’ve been fortunate enough to make some money from a stock that has more than tripled in less than a year, the smart thing to do is to take some profits…just like the pros are doing. ‘Apple has been very good to us,’ said Buckingham. ‘But I’m not that greedy. I’m content to let others fight over the last 10 to 15 bucks of upside,” La Monica writes.
Full article here.