“Charles Wolf, a celebrated Apple Inc. analyst at Needham & Co. who jumped to Wall Street after teaching at Columbia Business School for almost two decades, has died,” Stephen Miller reports for Bloomberg. “He was 81.”
“He died on Oct. 28 at his Manhattan apartment, his wife, Margot Wolf, said yesterday. The cause was lung cancer. He had been working through the weekend reviewing Apple’s latest financial results, she said,” Miller reports. “Wolf was often sought out by business journalists for his views about Cupertino, California-based Apple. He also wrote the technology newsletters Wolf Bytes and Wolf Bits.”
“His first call as an analyst was a sell recommendation on Commodore International Ltd., an early PC maker. When the stock subsequently tanked, Wolf’s star rose,” Miller reports. “‘Like the aging baseball rookie in ‘The Natural,’ Charles R. Wolf came to Wall Street late in his career, but not too late to become a home run hitter,’ the Journal said in its profile.”
“Wolf’s next big call, in April 1985, was a prescient buy recommendation on Apple when it traded at around a split-adjusted 38 cents a share. He remained enthusiastic about the company. It closed yesterday at $107.34,” Miller reports. “His home office ‘looks like an Apple showroom,’ his wife said in a telephone interview.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This past January we called Charlie Wolf “one of the best Apple analysts.” Wolf was a reliable voice of reason for many years. We’ll miss his Apple analysis. Charlie left some big shoes to fill over at Needham & Co.
R.I.P., Charlie.
Related articles:
Needham ups Apple price target to $97, says Swift will further enhance iPhone superiority – June 24, 2014
Needham’s Wolf: It would be ‘impossible’ for Apple to successfully build a cheap iPhone – January 8, 2014
Needham analyst Wolf: Microsoft’s anti-Apple Mac ads a waste of money – September 2, 2009
Needham’s Wolf: New products and innovative strategies from Apple should keep coming – November 10, 2005
If I wasn’t an Apple fanboy, I never would’ve known who he was. May he rest in peace.
Usually the only good analyst is a dead one, except in Wolf’s case. RIP Charles doing what you liked doing best up until the end.
Probably one of the few analysts that actually used Apple products. I think many of those other analysts have never used Apple products because they seem so clueless about the company’s prospects. I hope Mr. Wolf also bought Apple stock. He lived to be a fairly ripe old age and should have made quite a bit of money from Apple after all these years. I sure hope he doesn’t get replaced by some iHating idiot but maybe I’m asking too much.
Probably another victim of Tobacco – it was a plague in his lifetime – and is still a leading cause of Cancer deaths. Just like today’s Climate Change deniers, biostitutes sold their scientific credentials to plant just enough doubt in the minds of the public to keep them smoking until they die.
If you bought Apple in 1985 on his recommendation – good for you, but it would have been a long, hard ride for about 15+ years. From Scully to Gil Amelio it was a long ride in mediocrity followed by the near death days until Steve Jobs got things back on track.
Apple pissed away more of a product lead under John Sculley than probably any other Tech executive in history, It took Microsoft until Windows 95 to approach what Apple shipped with the early Macintosh models and they still were not as good in most ways.
Sincere condolences to the family and friends of Charles Wolf. RIP.
He went to that great analcyst in the sky.