“One analyst blacklisted several companies on Monday, citing a reason not often (or possibly ever) heard on Wall Street—moral and ethical grounds,” Katie Little reports for CNBC. “In the report, Ronnie Moas, Standpoint Research’s founder and director of research, downgraded Apple stock from a ‘hold’ to a ‘sell,’ reiterated a ‘sell’ recommendation for Amazon.com shares and initiated Philip Morris stock with a ‘sell’ rating. After holding in his feelings for ‘too long,’ Moas wrote that he couldn’t sleep despite taking his nightly sleeping pill. At 1 a.m., he reached his boiling point and felt compelled to speak his mind.”
Little reports, “Moas’ Standpoint bio page states he began his career as an analyst and market strategist at Herzog Heine Geduld, which was bought by Merrill Lynch in 2002, before leaving to start his own firm in 2000.”
Before this, he served for three years in the Israeli army and worked in concert productions,” Little reports. “‘For Apple Computers [sic] to pay their workers $2 an hour while they have $150 billion in the bank is nothing short of obscene. I heard all of the arguments in their defense and they make no sense to me,’ wrote Moas in the note.”
Little reports, “Thomson Reuters StarMine, which tracks and ranks analysts’ performance, has no record of Moas’ recommendations on Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hey, Ronnie, how’s the water in the deep end?
Mr. Misinformed fails to realize that Apple has done more to raise the quality and pay of Chinese assembly jobs than any other company on the planet.
Apple stock should not be “downgraded” by even a no-name, one-man-band, scary-eyed “analyst” on this basis.
Related articles:
Apple supplier Foxconn again lifts pay for China workers; 16-25 percent increase – February 17, 2012
FLA President: Foxconn factories ‘first-class; way, way above average’ – February 15, 2012
Pos!!
I was 100% certain I was reading an Onion article. Very sad that reality is more outrageous than parody and satire these days.
He has a strange sense of morality by the sound of it.
He does have a point though… and it’s not to do with Chinese workers.
Why do CEOs make thousands of times their employees? Are they, as a human, worth 1000s of times more? Why do pay scales become exponential as you go up? Shouldn’t they be more linear?
Jealousy is an ugly emotion.
Tim Cook earns his money, and as a shareholder, I’m happy to see him get it.
-jcr
Jealousy has nothing to do with it, envy does. Check out their definition.
It should be more linear but greed is a powerful thing. The people at the bottom (like me) work more and work harder than the store manager, or district manager etc. all the way up to the chairman and CEO. yet they’re the one getting paid the big bucks. Quite sad that us minions do all their work while they sit in some fancy office doing practically jack all.
What is now known as a “Clowngrade”
Translation: Hey people, I’m shorting this stock and I’m starting to worry that I might get wiped out so a little stock manipulation is in order and this is business as usual and nobody is gonna throw my ass in jail.
Why don’t you let them/him know how you feel?
Standpoint Research contact us:
http://www.standpointresearch.com/contactus.htm
I watched this CLOWN on CNBC and he was pathetic…..a one-person shop….guess the Apple haters love him but he is CLUELESS like so many others…………..!
I saw him also. The stock isn’t down on his comments either. He’s a nobody. Not really sure why it’s down this morning? Or lately. But as usual, Priceline, Google, Amazon are all up. As is the NASDAQ and most things in the NASDAQ. But this is nothing new. Been going on for a long time. Remember, you can’t fight the street. You’ll always lose. The intelligent investor goes with the flow. Difficult to constantly swim upstream.
He aspires to be part of the Enderle Group.
No, NO-O-O …!!!
That would DOUBLE the size of the Enderle “Group” !
CLUELESS like so many others…………..!
It shocked me to see the words “moral and ethical” and wall street “analyst” in the same sentence.
I need to go lie down for a while…
Well, it seems to me like this person is in the wrong line of work. His job, as an analyst, is to assess the future value of the company to investors. That’s the point of the Buy/Hold/Sell thing. To give investors guidance on how a stock will perform.
I have no problem with someone taking a stand against immoral business practices. But downgrading the stock is not how you take that stand. Time for a new profession if you’re that wrapped up about the morality of the companies you’re analyzing.
To call Apple immoral is so clueless it’s not even worth relating to.
Only in a blogged down America can an idiot like this get any attention..
When asked for further comment, Ronnie was indisposed, moving his bowels on the sidewalk in Zuccotti Park.
Hmm. Based on the “he served for three years in the Israeli army” fact mentioned in the article, it would be unlikely that he’s an Occupy Wall Street activist (or even a person with mental illness dumped off by the NYPD near the park whose embarrassing actions will be cynically used by assholes like the above to attempt to discredit thousands of people with legitimate complaints).
dear, first Poland , then The World,
You are one sick piece of sh… work!!! Just how much are your handlers paying you to constantly spew forth that vitriolic swill? I hope it’s a lot. You never let up. Man it must be hard forever living on the wrong side of history. It must be terrible going through life a miserable SOB. You should take some of that ill gotten gain and buy yourself a good mirror that’s not tainted with ignorance, hate and bigotry , along with many many vomit bags when you finally see the real you. I pity you and your ilk a waste of space and flesh however putrid it is. Do us all a favour and all of you slither off to the cesspool you came from. No one will miss you and America nay the world will only be the better for it.
A member of the 99%,
The more I know the monied class, the more I understand the Guillotine.
GBS
Now the Analysts want to “punish” companies based on moral and ethical grounds? The only ones needing that treatment are bankers and analysts, IMO.
Is he also downgrading Dell, Microsoft, HP, and every other company on the planet that deals with China? Or is he just singling out Apple so he can get attention?
BTW – They don’t work for Apple. China a Communist country, they work for the Chinese government. A country with so much money that they can afford to lend billions to countries like the USA.
+1 … and not only is this the Dell, MS, HP, **SAMSUNG** and the rest of the Electronics industry, but it is also the TEXTILES industry too in 3rd World Countries – – particularly since they’re not getting $2/hour but $2/day.
This Emperor _can’t_ wear clothes without being a hypocrite.
-hh
What a creep. So many companies manufacture in China, and he singles out the one that just started manufacturing in America, despite all the extra costs?
If you’re going to start investing based on morals, you can’t just say no to 3 companies – that’s asinine. What about all the financial groups that called the Great Recession? The oil companies, behind the Gulf of Mexico spill and climate change? The military industrial companies building armies of flying death machines? The pharmaceutical companies turning the nation into pill poppers? The sugar water and shitty food companies behind the ballooning obesity epidemic? Those goddamn cable companies (you know what I’m talking about)! Shit, man, that list of 3 companies blacklisted for moral has to get a lot bigger before it can taken seriously.
I really have to wonder what stocks he put a buy rating on.
He would put buy rating on morally corrupt companies like BP. They don’t get punished after the oil spill, because they supply oil to US Military.
You fail to mention the American companies who’s equipment BP was using, and which failed due to lax inspection and oversight.
And BP have been more than punished by being forced to pay compensation to people who live nowhere near the affected areas, and who’s businesses have suffered no harm. Try to ignore the blustering of American politicians looking to bolster their positions to a biased media.
And the equipment failure that caused the BP spill and killed people in the explosion and fire was a Microsoft Windows work station that kept having BSOD issues. So why is this jerk not downgrading Microsoft on moral issues?
Not sure how you even define “nowhere near the affected areas” for an enormous ecological disaster in the Atlantic Ocean, but my guess is you defined it shortsightedly. “More than punished” surely must be a joke: BP makes more profit every quarter than all the fines they paid for their convicted felonies in the Deepwater Horizon spill. They continue to run deep sea drilling operations because they see no business reason to dismantle it, even with the fines. When a punishment is insignificant and changes nothing, it’s a *slap on the wrist*. What BP needs, instead, is slaps to the face, repeated until it knocks sense into them, and barring that cuffs on the wrists – and I’m not talking about the soft kinky kind.
@Rorsach, I’m not interested in pushing any political agenda, only accurate information. I also don’t want to diverge from the topic at hand too much, but thought I would inject my limited amount of information on this subject with a splash of opinion.
I lived in Texas when BP had the Deepwater Horizon spill and have a fair amount of friends and acquaintances who worked for the company subcontracted to do that work. They gave me first hand information that BP forced them to do things that they were repeatedly warned against doing. BP cut corners and ignored them and, it appears, paid the right price for it.
The subcontractor, in fact, sued BP to uphold their contractual obligations to them as BP didn’t want to honor all aspects of the contract. The subcontractor won the suit. BP has been on the losing end of this all around, including a similar case with a more well known subcontractor.
In his fit of moral outrage, Mr. Moas might ask himself if 4 million Palestinians in their open air prison would like to have some basic human rights let alone work for Apple.
Creating and sustaining an Apartheid State requires a lot of “morality”. And US dollars…
Although he sounds like a nut case, I tend to agree with one part: Employers take too much money for what they do. I would like to see no one in a company earning more than 10 times the amount of the lowest paid worker. Surely that is enough incentive to move up the ladder. Employers need to increase the salaries of their employee who are at the bottom of the pay scale as the company succeeds.
In their zeal for particular kinds of decisions to be made, those with the vision of the anointed seldom consider the nature of the process by which decisions are made. Often what they propose amounts to third-party decision making by people who pay no cost for being wrong — surely one of the least promising ways of reaching decisions satisfactory to those who must live with the consequences. — Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell, and now you, are my heroes (him for the long term, you for today) ! His ability to put simply and undeniably, economic and political realities, is outstanding in today’s silly “journalist” mob screeds.
And Hannah is right up there too, as is Thelonius Monk.
Sorry! That should have read: “Thelonius MAC.”
Employees also need to earn their keep. If they’re productive and contribute to the bottom line, then their pay should increase. If not; well, don’t complain for the low wages; look for another job, or start your own. The idea that someone must take care of someone elae is asinine. Not everyone is the same; we are not all created equal. Some folks are smarter, develop skills, work harder than others, act responsible, and take risks. As long as they play fair, they should be rewarded. Society cannot pay a middle class wage for certain jobs like fast food. Soon, no one could afford to eat there. I can now buy and prepare a rib eye steak for what it cost me to to Wendy”s. Needles to say I don’t visit fast food shops much anymore. The value proposition is such that It is worthwhile for me to do without eating out as much and do more cooking at home. Let the markets and commerce be free. And for those who can, let’s also be charitable. That is the only America I want to live in.
While I disagree with 3l3c7ro’s basic premiss that no one should earn more than 10x what the lowest paid person earns as there are exceptions for specialty training and skills that make any linear progression in salary worthless, I do agree that there has been *sever* “C-level” salary inflation over the past 20+ years. Truly NO CEO (or other C-level position) is worth a base salary of over $1,000 per hour, yet they are out there (and some of them are complaining that they don’t paid enough).
Note: I don’t have problems with huge performance based bonuses — so long as those bonuses are tied to the *long term* betterment of the company. I do have a problem with performance bonuses that are done on a yearly basis or, even worse, on a quarterly basis.
Reading may be a lost skill on this site. Read all the words or my missive and see if your response is appropriate.
At no time did I state that everyone should get the same.
Apple did far more than the rest of foreign companies in raisng the bar and pay for workers in China.
And Foxconn’s employees are not Apple’s. Any employer in China cheating their workers are just as likely cheating Apple too (skimming pay, not paying overtime, forging compliance audit results…).
Good points. Are any of them in response to my post?
Actually, the historical standard for this sort of thing was about 40x. That’s still the case in many countries, including Japan. It was the long-standard case here in America, too. That is, until the Reagan era, when tax codes were changed to incentivize companies to give more to their top execs. Now the average CEO makes about 350x more than the average paid worker, according to a recent Exectuive Compensation Survey from Institute for Policy Studies.
40 times is more fair than 350 times but I advocate it be set at 10 times by voluntary action of company directors.
Last time their was that much of a difference between the haves and the have nots in the western world it was under Louis XVI and we all know how that worked out for him and the ones like all of you here that also reply “let them eat cake”
Good luck with that ppl.
He is an animal himself, his English sucks. He is an immoral person in every sense.
Twenty years ago, those workers didn’t earn $2 per month and this guy thinks it’s a problem that they now earn $2 per hour.
What a tool.
Did he downgrade Samsung and the other thousands electronics companies that pay their chinese workers half of what Apple pays?
That wouldn’t get him on TV.
Sounds like a disgruntled Microsoft employee. Meanwhile, Bill Gates has his billions stuffed in a foundation where they are free from tax and will support his family to eternity.
“For Apple Computers to pay their workers $2 an hour…”
Does he have hard evidence of Apple paying a single one of THEIR workers $2 per hour? I think not…
lets be fair, Steve only got $1 per YEAR! Where is the outrage?
The analyst should know the following:
1. He is referring to third party companies in third countries (such as China), which have a different level of per capita income than the United States. $2 per hour in China does not equate to $2 per hour in our country.
2. Apple does not pay these employees. In fact, they are not employees of Apple, but rather companies with which Apple contracts. To link the the employees directly to Apple is disingenuous. Add to that these same vendors provide similar assembly services for Apple’s competitors. So to heap all the blame on Apple is simply incorrect.
3. Apple does pay its direct employees a fair wage worldwide, and is careful to assure their working conditions are sound. Further, Apple has been quite vigilant on assuring good working conditions of the employees of its third party vendors. That said, the treatment and compensation of third party employees is the vendors’ business, not Apple’s. Yet, Apple has taken a leadership role in assuring and improving working conditions for these third party workers, even though this is not specifically the company’s responsibility.
I would suggest that it is time for the analyst to seek another line of work. An analyst’s responsibility is to correctly project sales, earnings, cash flow and profitability of the companies they cover, and to make a case for selling the firm’s services to large institutional (not retail) investors, and nothing more.
and he can’t even get the name of the company right…
He keeps talking about how Apple treats their employees but I think he should be talking about how Foxconn treats their employees. Where does it end? Is Apple responsible for the actions of the company that makes an individual chip they use? If Intel misbehaves should Apple also be held responsible? Perhaps we should seize Apple’s cash and give it to the poor.
So, since apple is beating every single record in numbers, then they are gonna just evaluate them with religion? ANALYst must work really hard…. to find ways to downgrade apple.
Another one added to the ranks of World Class Idiots!!!
He should have a job at Cluster-Fox Business Network by Friday… AND, he’ll be on the world;s KLOWN LIST by Tuesday of next week..