“Gene Munster is known in some circles as the ‘Apple Oracle,'” Bloomberg News reports.
“As a sale side research analyst for Piper Jaffrey, it’s his responsibility to predict what kind of impact a new Apple product will have on the company’s stock, as well as what kind of impact it will have on the industry as a whole,” Bloomberg News reports.
“Bloomberg Businessweek followed Munster on the day Apple released its newest iPhone to get an inside look on how he gathers information:
Direct link to video here.
‘Apple Oracle’ ? Is this suppose to be a joke?
When the the oracle think the big screen iTV is coming out. He has predicted it for five straight years. Maybe one of these days his predictions will turn out to be accurate. Broken clock and all that.
I’m pretty sure the Oracle at Delphi more accurately predicted the Apple TV than Gene.
Before the 20-year-old Alexander the Great embarked on his campaign to conquer the Persian Empire, the Oracle at Delphi told Alexander that he was invincible. It was one of the greatest predictions ever made although a different answer may have cost her life. 😉
“In some circles?”
Seriously, a circle of one maybe.
He is also the nitwit that claimed that Apples numbers released the following Monday were channel fill rather than actual sales. Now that we know what the quarterly sales are, everyone knows he was talking out of his butt. Running along the line at the Apple store is now considered financial research.
only to cover his backside on his low ball estimate of sales of the iPhone.
Amazingly how the consumers loved for the iPhones, the iPhones has made so much money for Apple. But in contrast for Apple investors, the announcement for iPhones AAPL plummeted almost 26 points due to organized attacking of journalists, analysts. This should be stopped, those trolls need to be punished and facing the consequences for wrongful bashing Apple, Apple has so many lawyers in the house, they need to take care of this issue once and for all.
You need to remember that a company’s stock price has NEVER been linked to the actual fortunes of the company. Stock prices are all about speculation. Always have been, always will be.
Technically, you’re incorrect. Stock price is DIRECTLY tied to the company’s fortunes. One can’t accurately calculate the value of a company without considering prices per share. Using other methods of calculating the “true value” of a company is to ignore the fundamental truth of capitalism: an object is only worth what the biggest fool will pay for it.
Once again, Apple fans mistake product excellence for financial well-being. Ask Tektronix or Fluke about that. They’ve been producing brilliant electronics in their niche of the industry for decades, but you haven’t heard of them. Excellence alone does not make anyone rich. More often than not, the better product undersells the cheap knockoff because the average consumer has been brainwashed by WalMart to concentrate only on initial purchase price when evaluating the value of anything.
Journalists and analysts have nothing to do with AAPL price fluctuations. Please get a clue as to how the stock market works. These large hedge funds and industrial investors make moves to drive the price up or down, depending on their position so they make short-term money.
That’s easy for them to do around an Apple event, because they have enough advance warning to position their holdings, drive the price up or down, and then profit after.
So stop looking for some causal relationship between journalist reports, Apple announcements, and stock price. It will drive you insane trying to create one, because it doesn’t exist.
Prices go up and prices go down on the share market – it’s a fact. Often, rumours, herd behaviour or analyst reports (accurate or not) affect the share price. It’s as if a lot of people around here have never seen the share market which is: “buy on the rumours, sale on the news”.
You have to love these self serving made up wannabe celebrities. Reminds me of the radio deejays that go on how great they are because they are going to play popular music and that gives them an excuse to mix their names with others that work and have talent.
How about doing some real investigative reporting and give us a day of the death of Gene Munster, showing him composing his departure and all going over and apologizing for all the crap analysts that he’s been pouring out. Hmmm might be a bit longer than a day for the death of Gene Munster.
Looks like slow poison might be called for.
Agreed. The job of an analyst is to crunch numbers and attempt to do so accurately, not be a self-promoting pundit. Most analysts, Munster included, fail at both. I must take into account they are SELL-side analysts, pushing what their brokerage house wants them to hype. It’s why I don’t trust analysts in general – they have an agenda.
What frustrates me is how much influence a single analyst report or assertion can have on the media and on the stock share price of a company they cover. It would be one thing if they were accurate. By and large, they are not, and by a wide margin. But the fact that analysts have so much impact and garner so much coverage is infuriating. It shows how lazy the financial and mainstream media is to merely run stories based on an analyst’s poorly formed and researched opinions. It’s inexcusable that the media simply grab an analyst report off the shelf and run with it, without doing any investigation or due diligence of their own to question the assertion.
Add to that the fact that people like Munster have become self-promoting rock star wannabes, and believe their own BS. That Munster thinks he can shame a company like Apple into making a TV because he wants one with an Apple logo is shameful. I for one cannot find a good reason why Apple would want to make its own TV. From a business perspective, TVs are a mature product vertical, highly commoditized and price competitive. Samsung has used its vertical manufacturing capabilities to slowly win the product category, and this is one area where Apple would never want to compete. Unless Apple has something in the works that completely reinvents TV, trying to be a late entrant in such a competitive, low-margin, low turnover product category makes no sense.
Except to Gene Munster. And that’s what terrifies me.
I continue to ask what value an analyst adds to the larger equation. When it comes to making investment decisions, the LAST place I look for advice is from the analyst community. I simply do not, and never will trust their blather. I perform my own research, using the abundant tools available today, and am a better investor for it.
Well played.
Gene Munster has zero effect on Apple’s decision to enter into a new market.
If (more likely when) Apple decides to enter the TV market (be it with a TV or some attached device above an AppleTV), I do not expect the product to be significantly more expensive. Why? Because Apple has considerable buying power and can buy in bulk, lock in low prices with its cash capabilities, and otherwise drive its suppliers’ prices down.
Apple will keep healthy margins, but Apple also won’t release a product until it can price it right. That doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find a less expensive TV, but you also won’t get the Apple goodies that will make Apple’s offering a quantum leap above today’s TV products.
100% bogus.
It didn’t show the dartboard where he does his REAL research!
… and his iWatch reminded him of the iTV release date!
Gene’s lost his touch. Did he get anything right this year? Stock price? Products? I think he got concerned he was seen as an Apple shill.
Munster has his head up his ass.
He is one of the better analysts out there and he does not jump on the Apple hate bandwagon. But he has been hoping for a TV for a while. I don’t think we will see one.