“It’s funny how perceptions can vary so widely. After spending a day at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Jan. 15 covering Steve Jobs’ keynote address and attending Macworld Expo, I was taking a break and watching CNBC. One of the CNBC commentators, Pete Najarian, called the Jobs keynote ‘disappointing’ and went on to rip the company. Everything the chief executive revealed was expected, he said. With no surprise product, there’d been no upside possible for the stock,” Arik Hesseldahl reports for BusinessWeek.
“I had seen how the markets initially reacted to Apple’s (AAPL) announcements. At one point, Apple stock had dropped by nearly 8% during the session, down almost $10 a share, to 164.66. By the close, it had recovered somewhat to 169.04, but still lost more than 5% for the day,” Hesseldahl reports.
“Watching Najarian, I chuckled. Here was one who doesn’t get it. And there appeared to be many more like him out there. More than 83 million Apple shares changed hands on Jan. 15, not a record, but unusually high. Many clearly opted to sell on news they judged to be disappointing,” Hesseldahl reports. “For those who bought before Macworld in hopes of cashing in on a keynote bounce, I have only one word: suckers.”
“So what to make of this year’s keynote-day sell-off? More than a few analysts are calling it a buying opportunity. Analysts at Piper-Jaffray, Morgan Stanley, Pacific Crest, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank all see the pullback as a chance to buy before another run,” Hesseldahl reports.
“What’s to like? Plenty. Mac and iPod sales are expected to show a single-quarter record when Apple reports its results for the final three months of 2007. And while iPhone sales—now totalling 4 million units since the late June launch—may be a little behind expectations, the handheld is already the second most popular smartphone in the U.S. A new version compatible with speedier next-generation cellular networks—expected sometime late this year—will go a long way toward winning international business,” Hesseldahl reports. “And then there’s the great unknown of AppleTV. Is it the next iPod? Will consumers flock to the idea of buying and renting iTunes video content from the comfort of the couch?”
Hesseldahl reports, “Either way, analysts don’t seem worried anything has fundamentally changed with this year’s Macworld pageant. Once that’s clear, all those who sold on what they thought was a bad keynote may feel like suckers, too.”
Full article here.
The stupidity of others is often profitable.
Apple’s stock always rises going into a keynote and falls on the day of; just like every other stock out there.
By the end of this year, even those you bought at $200 a share will have made a lot of money (unless they sold at $160).
I’m the expert on who the suckers are and they are not the people who trade AAPL. Like me, the people who trade AAPL depend on the entirely predictible behavior of suckers.
These @#$!ing talking heads!
Do they actually think Apple is going to release game changing revolutionary products every 3 months!
What other company is judged at this unattainable level…certainly not Microshaft or Dull!
What’s going on in the market right now ain’t about AAPL, follks. It’s about the losses in the financial sector related to the subprime mess.
If you are desperate for liquidity and had a sizeable position in AAPL prior to last year’s bullrun, it’s a good time to sell.
If you are long, long, long, opportunity is knocking once again.
“Everything the chief executive revealed was expected, he said.”
because it was all leaked beforehand. seems apple isn’t able to control that anymore. no secrets anymore before a stevenote. all on the internet. so no surprises possible.
It pays to know what type of investor you are. I hear people whining, but the smart investors have targets.
And patience.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
A good friend of mine — a diehard Apple fan — was gleeful about the stock’s performance.
For some years now, he’s been selling Apple stock just before a Stevenote and buying it back when the stock tanks, then making a tidy profit when the price bounces back.
So he sold all his AAPL when it was at $180, and then spent the same amount of money buying AAPL stock when it was at $158. When it bounces back, he’ll have a tidy little profit, and at the volumes he trades, probably more than I make in a year.
Hessedahl’s piece points out the distinction between “investors”, those who are fundamentally confident about the potential of a business and are willing to put their money into it regardless of the stock price, and “speculators”, those persons who are attempting to profit from variations in the stock price, and are much less concerned (or not at all concerned) about the viability of the company. Speculators take a much shorter term view than investors.
My eldest brother owns a mutual fund company whose portfolio includes only a handful of companies (15-20), not the typical 150-200 held by most other mutual funds. His philosophy takes the long view, namely that if a company is fundamentally sound, it will make money for investors, regardless of the stock price, and that there’s no way in hell any financial adviser can know enough about 200 companies to be an expert on their respective businesses and give sound advice to investors.
He has a dubious view of speculators, and one of his favorite sayings is that by focusing only on the price of a stock, speculators are ignoring the game and watching the scoreboard. Is his a viable strategy? You tell me: he’s a billionaire, I’m not.
If you follow the media, you will notice that precious few outlets report with independence of mind. The echo one another ad nauseam. Sometimes it’s as if there is one mind generating news copy and e-mailing it to all the different reporters. Even the language is duplicated to the point of seeming erie. Pay attention to any of the talking head shows and you’ll see this.
This works across all media. I don’t care if they’re covering politics or technology. It becomes painfully evident that reporters have no idea what they are talking or writing about. If you’re reading this website you probably know a great deal about computers, in particular Apple computers. You are aware when the media is full of shit.
Consider all the other subjects that you don’t know a thing about. You may be an expert on computers, but how much do you really know about medicine, international affairs, etc. Keep in mind it’s the same idiots reporting about those things. So when they all tell you exactly the same thing, almost to the point of reading a centrally distributed piece of copy, you should stop and think, and your bullshit meter should go off, whether you agree with the reporter or not.
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The writers that matter aren’t on strike. Read a book
How can their be surprises when everything is being leaked before the keynote. Apple should stop doing these Expos for just that reason. No need to waste their time and ours on a show that has already been pre-released to the public. I mean the Time Capsule was a big surprise to me, but everything else was well documented online by the time Steve got up on stage. I could only imagine what was going through Steve’s head with 3 of the 4 talking points already published by the “media”. I say apple drops the keynotes and just announce new products and updates via press releases and website updates.
“And while iPhone sales—now totalling 4 million units since the late June launch—may be a little behind expectations…”
Say what? In last year’s keynote Jobs said Apple’s goal was to sell 10 million iPhones by the END of 2008. As of January 15th, they’ve sold 4 million units. How is that behind expectations?
Viridian – An the name of the fund is … ?
lets wait to see the numbers!!!!!
What was one of the lead stories maybe a week ago … “Apple’s rapid product cycles lead to buyer’s remorse”? So … if you change everything too often you depress your customers but if you DON’T update everything too often you depress the price of your stock?
Yeah.
OK.
Got it.
Don’t buy the stock in the run-up to a keynote.
Dave
That’s not what should happen. It wasn’t that the products were leaked. The only thing I saw that was ‘confirmed’ was the 1.1.3 update for the iPhone and even still I was doubtful. Everything else was still a ‘possibility.’ Frankly, I think the stock dumps because people start fantasizing about products. They start dreaming up things that are years ahead of production and even further ahead in the market. People saying crazy things like a Large iPhone-like tablet, or another 12″ Pro laptop (does anybody realize that they stopped making that because it wasn’t widescreen and that smaller than 13″ widescreen is too small? duh!), another iPhone (only 200 days after the initial release? that’d be an Apple first), an iMac docking station for a mac tablet, another Newton, I mean shoot, we all saw the damn bingo card. People need to stop this belief that Apple satisfies everybody and that everybody wins no matter what they wanted. It simply isn’t true. Apple can’t satisfy everybody and they certainly can’t make everything that people dream up simply because they dreamt it. Even now people are still dreaming, like those complainers about the new MacBook Air. This is their argument, “I really wanted a laptop smaller than Christ’s ego, but with EVERYTHING in it, even stuff I use maybe two or three times a year.” It’s called a “sub-notebook” hence the word, SUB, as in, lesser than a notebook. It’s not your primary computer, but with things like Time Capsule, Remote Disc, Back to my Mac, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and the included features, you have probably one of the lightest, most capable macs out there. It’s such a neat modern concept, “Just because it isn’t attached doesn’t mean you can’t use it.” I’m stoked for this year at Apple, it’s still only January and Apple just released 4 great products and features into the world.
Ditto, Falkirk. You wrote the exact words that came to my mind. Apple is in a difficult position going forward in terms of expectations because the company has habitually underestimated and overperformed, both financially and in terms of product innovation. It is truly difficult to live up to speculators’ dreams…
“Viridian – An the name of the fund is … ?”
lol Sorry Lurker,
I’d rather not allow my family or business life (or my family’s business life) to leak over onto public forums.
All I’ll say is that my brothers and I own and operate the largest retail chain in our country of residence (2006 sales $857 million USD). My eldest brother is not a part of the retail business, having founded and managed a very successful mutual fund company for the past 25 years.
How successful? He owns a large private jet, a 200 ft. yacht and three (or is it four?) helicopters, as well as numerous homes around the world. Oh, and he likes to collect Ferraris, especially rare ones (he owns an Enzo). Until 2007, he was the only one of my 8 siblings who still used a PC, but he had an epiphany when his latest passion, digital photography, led him naturally to the Macintosh. After fiddling with OS X for a while, he promptly ran out and bought a fully tricked out Mac Pro tower and has never looked back at Windows, except to sneer at it and shake his head in disbelief that he suffered with it for so many years. The last domino has fallen, thankfully.
Funny coincidence for a Mac lover: his yacht was originally commissioned by Jim Allchin, then-boss of Microsoft’s Platform Group, with overall responsibility for development of Windows. But the poor guy never got to enjoy her even once. Before she was launched in Germany, Allchin had to postpone his retirement from Microsoft and put her up for sale in order to focus his energy on a major project that appeared headed for trouble. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s called “Vista”, or something like that.
I only went aboard for the yacht for the first time last summer, and enjoyed the hell out of her on Allchin’s behalf. She’s a real beauty and has garnered enormous attention in the megayacht community for her superlative engineering and magnificently understated decor. Great taste in yachts Jim, not so great in operating systems.
The old adage: buy on rumor, sell on news.
Most of the Keynote was exciting.
The WORST part of the Keynote was being forced to listen to Randy Newman. Did they owe him something and had to have him on? Like he didn’t get a Christmas bonus from Pixar or something?
I was in the center of the row I was in, or I’d have left. That and I had hope there would be a last minute “And one more thing…”
Alas, there was not.
I watch CNBC quite alot, and they don’t understand technology, at all. They’re traders, with very short attention spans.
“So the guys who didn’t get burned enough on Tuesday this week are likely to game Tuesday next week, for AAPL earnings.”