“For those of us not directly invested in Apple, the stock’s trajectory over the last six months has been a thrill ride to rival anything you’ll find at Magic Mountain,” Michael Hiltzik writes for The Los Angeles Times. “Since hitting an all-time peak of $705 in mid-September, the shares have been on a long slide, reaching $419 before recovering a bit to almost $462 last week. At the peak, learned Wall Street analysts were speculating about how high Apple could go and whether the sky really was the limit; at the current trough, they’re all but proclaiming the end of the Apple era.”
MacDailyNews Take: Idiots, dullards, manipulators, and thieves. As it ever was; nothing new to see on Wall Street.
“Here are the questions on everyone’s lips: Who’s right? And where does it go from here?” Hiltzik writes. “And here are the answers: I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody on CNBC knows. And if they try to tell you they do know, run for the hills with your hand on your wallet. What we can say, however, is that the sentiment and stock action related to Apple offer a perfect study in how conjecture and misunderstanding can trump actual knowledge when it comes to evaluating a company. When the company is as much the focus of worldwide attention and as uncommunicative about its own plans as Apple, the effect is even sharper.”
“The peculiar stock market action and the vacuum in information have combined to generate a wave of news articles and market reports suggesting that Apple has lost its zip and is running as fast as it can just to keep up with Samsung, the maker of its own line of popular smartphones,” Hiltzik writes. “Yet the notion that Apple is ‘ceding its crown’ (Reuters‘ words) in smartphones to Samsung or anyone else, however, is wrong or, at the very least, hopelessly premature.”
Much more in the full article – very highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Kudos, to Hiltzik for this article!
And, Reuters, as we pointed out in mid-January, has become a laughingstock with its blatantly obvious pro-Samsung and anti-Apple ridiculousness.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Daring Fireball’s Gruber on ‘ceding the crown’ – March 15, 2013
Problem is, there is NOT a vacuum of information: Apple’s quarterly reports have been nothing short of spectacular.
Conversely, Amazon’s reports have become pitiful, yet the stock is at all-time highs.
The only vacuum is between the ears of the analysts.
Well said.
I would add the vacuum also includes the enabling media and reactionary Wall Street that pays more attention to distracting headlines over solid fundamentals.
So why do you buy into it then? Because you want a quick buck, just like these idiots, dullards, manipulators, and thieves.
Wall Street is a gambling ring and pyramid scheme. You can definitely make some cash, but don’t hate the player, hate the game – or maybe it’s the other way around…
Only those who don’t understand the market place would make a statement like yours DS. Learn what free enterprise and free markets are about first before you make such statements.
Time for a speculation tax on Wall Street. Inversely proportional to the duration of ownership of a stock position. Any holding under a millisecond is taxed at 100% of the value of the purchase. Losses are not deductible as an offset against gains.