Who first called Apple at $500?

“Eyebrows were raised in October 2010 when Daniel Ernst hiked his 12-month Apple (AAPL) price target from $300 a share to $500. But perhaps drawing attention to himself was the point. The senior analyst at Hudson Square Research is now a regular contributor on CNBC and his current price target — $700 — is once again the Street’s highest,” Phillip Elmer-Dewitt reports for Fortune.

“With Apple hitting an intraday high of $497.62 Friday — 0.5% and perhaps a few trading hours from his original target — you might think Ernst had earned bragging rights for making the first $500 per share call,” P.E.D. reports. “But a look at his track record on Apple suggests otherwise. Not only did his Oct. 2010 price target bear no relation to the numbers in his spreadsheet, but of all the analysts who follow the company, his published estimates have proved to be among the worst.”

P.E.D. reports, “Over the past five quarters, his average error on earnings and revenues are second only to Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty for the magnitude of their misses.”

Read more in the full article, with other analysts who might better claim “first” for calling AAPL at $500, here.

25 Comments

  1. What what what? These aholes gets rewards about that????

    I am waiting AAPL to first brake the $1000 barrier and then $2000. Why you ask? Because Apple is now $200B company in yearly revenue, but they will become a $400B company in yearly revenue. This with in the next 3-5 years.

  2. Financial advisors are very conservative. A year ago, January, a friend was going to meet with his. He has a managed account, which is something I would never do. He inherited some money, and wanted me to give him some advice. I told him to tell his advisor to buy Apple with it. It was about a couple hundred thousand, a good number, but not huge, as a percentage of his total investments. Apple was at $325. A couple of days later, he told me that his advisor said that he would do it—when Apple pulled back to about $290.

    Well, we know what happened!

    1. most financial advisors are near useless

      even clown Jim Cramer lambasts them. cramer used to be a hedge fund manager and says to be a successful manager you spend most of your time getting clients (i.e in sales and marketing and networking) and NOT much time paying attention to the market. Like my bank advisor (whom I don’t use for stock advice although she does that too) spends her whole day book full of client appointments – when does she spend time studying companies? That’s why so many bank fund managers, personal financial advisors perform worse than amateur stock watchers.

  3. Being first to call the number has no relevance. Being first to call the number AND THE DATE is what is important. Inflation will take all stocks to $500 a share eventually. (Ooo did I just call a first?)

    The key is modeling how a company will perform, not only in their quarterly numbers, but relative to the market’s strength. Then you model the broader Market, and target where the stock will be.

    If the Market had not rallied in the past 18 months, we would not be celebrating AAPL $500 this Quarter.

    Who can call the dividend announcement – one time, quarterly? amount? data of announcement?

Reader Feedback

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.