I saw that. It's pretty nuts. edit....Just read some more about it. It looks like they are more than doubling their existing campus and expected to hire around 3600 workers over the next 10 years. It's pretty amazing how much development is going on in Austin. Just saw that Moody's sees AAPL's cash horde growing to $150 billion by the end of 2012. It's amazing how some people didn't see how much cash they had coming in. Now it's like the market is in a squeeze to get long this company. It's hard to not automatically discount $150 billion (about $160/share) from the market cap of AAPL and when you see EPS estimates of about $43/share for the FY 2012 then you have a stock that is trading about 10 times forward estimates. It's still kind of.....cheap.
All that said about AAPL I'll let you guys know when my dad calls me to ask if he should buy some AAPL aka the time to take profits :grin:.
I can pretty much guarantee at some point in the future apple will be worth less than 500bil dollars. That is the history of every technology company ever. From IBM, MIcrosoft, to Cisco, to Yahoo, etc.
Like I said, 12/29 lows should hold, chop for a few more weeks. The underpeformance is from people speculating QE3 being taken off the table. Also complacency in the markets with everyone pretty much giving banks the green light after JPM news(which obviously insiders knew ahead of time, explains the 3 week drift up with 0 pullback). With the Russell and transports underperforming for weeks, AAPL extremely extended, VIX at 14, I think minimally an intermediate term top is on the horizon for equities. Once Europe comes back into the picture, Gold could get one last hit on initial liquidation alongside everything else, but should start the next leg up afterwards.
Yen is definitely trading on BOJ posturing right now, in addition to general market sentiment. I was actually short it at the beginning of February speculating on another intervention, safe to say I got out of that trade way too prematurely. The thing is though, every single time they've intervened, the Yen has always found buyers and rallied right back up. This time seems a little different though, going down without an actual intervention for one. Maybe that is the sign of a real top with actual sellers, but at some point I still want to be a buyer, at least to give it a shot one more time.
Insiders knew what? Pretty much all the financials have been trading the same. Some stronger...some weaker. Not really any indication of insider trade especially on JPM. And even thought I've only traded a few times in the past couple months I do think it is curious how the transports have underperformed. That said the VIX can stay sub 20 for long periods of time. I remember from back when I first started trading. It sucks. But yeah the market and AAPL are probably a bit head of themselves.
I'm not talking about insiders buying JPM, I'm talking about the market floating on a cloud the past 3 weeks. Now that the news is finally out, it should put a lid on the market soon.
A new idea I'd like the board to challenge: Short oil right now. Logic: -- Strong incentive for the Obama administration to reduce oil and gasoline prices, as the economy could the the main barrier to his re-election --Along the same lines, curbing "oil speculation" and tapping the strategic petroleum reserve have both been floated --Saudi Arabia just announced they are increasing output, given the low spare capacity in the market. Iraq has more and more oil coming online as well --The US equities market shows signs of topping (super low VIX, low volume up days, nothing but good news recently) --China data has been sluggish of late --The Fed even noted that they believe high oil prices to be a temporary situation Of course the big wild card is the Iran issue, and potentially the Russia/Saudi showdown in Syria. Intrade has the likelihood of an Israeli or US strike at around 33% by end of year. I don't think Obama touches that prior to November for fear of his re-election. I'd welcome your opinions. I'm also looking for a good vehicle to short -- should I just buy puts on USO? decent liquidity there. Is there some kind of spread that I could employ? Options strategies aren't my area of expertise.
well, it's a little early for the touchdown dance, but it appears oil could be starting its path lower.
Oil looks like it could drift lower from here but I would be a buyer around 98-100. Personally if I had to sell something I would sell the spoos for many of the reasons you already mentioned. I think the positive headline risk is out of the way for indices, while they still remain for oil. If you want to trade it just open up a futures account with ameritrade, tradestation, IB etc.
What's your time horizon? Thru the election? Shorter term? And what kind of a pullback are you thinking is possible in oil?
So hey guys, I recently got my hands on a thousand bucks... And I was thinking of using it to invest in something. Only problem is I have never done anything like this before and have no idea where to start. I've already asked my Dad to talk to me about it but I figure I could get even more opinions on where I can start off.
Excellent analysis of Apple. http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/6006-no-it-cant-be-google-cant-be-winning-in-the-mobile-race
Spot on. I'll be the first to admit that I have been dead wrong about aapl's stock price, however I still believe in my initial fundamental stance, and think that it will play out, eventually. That doesn't mean aapl can't hit $1,000 first. That is how manias play out, with long tails. But remember, at the top of every mania, there have always been phony fundamentals backing it up too. People look back at the dot com bubble and say how obvious that was. They forget that back then, those companies had revenue growth of hundreds of percent, some growing at 1,000% a year. When you factored that in, the share price looked cheap to many back then too, assuming that they can keep it up. The same thing will happen to aapl eventually, with everyone assuming that they can keep their margins where they are indefinitely and factoring that in to all their valuations. That is not to say aapl is vaporware and will evaporate like the dot coms. Aapl is still a great company, but it is not worth the entire US retail industry. It has all the signs of a mania right now, and it will eventually crack like all manias, no matter how much cash is on their balance sheets.
But can't that be said of any stock? Choose any that has the fundamentals you like and that are currently going up. Eventually it's going to go down, if it doesn't keep up with your expectations. If AAPL keeps on doing crazy sales numbers (because that's the expectation), this 'bubble' will continue. When it stops doing so the stock will drop. Similarly, choose a more conservative stock that is more aligned with your fundamentals... if at some point it no longer meets those more conservative fundamentals, the bubble will pop. Will it be as dramatic? Numbers wise no but maybe just as much scale wise.
I won't get into the stock price aspect, because it's either overvalued now or was really undervalued 3 months ago - so someone was wrong somewhere. But this whole "they are losing market share rapidly to Android" is a bit of a fallacy. In both the phone and tablet markets, Apple only competes on the high end. They are basically taking the Starbucks approach of creating a particular image and end user happiness that a generic cup of coffee - even if it tastes better - doesn't necessarily evoke. The market, however, is growing into the lower end space, and that is where Android is building its market share. And there's no doubt that's a legitimate and important market - but it's not like Apple is losing that market to Google: they simply haven't tried to compete in it (though that may be changing with the free older iPhones, etc). In the higher end market that they do compete in, they still basically dominate the market - to the point where some of the Android device makers are finally getting smarter and stopping the whole "a new phone ever month" stuff and trying to streamline and follow the Apple model to some extent. I also think it's important to note that while Google is the key competitor, they are a company with numerous flaws and one that is prone to tons of missteps. They built their brand on creating what the user wants and "always doing good", but they've shown a lot of indications recently of losing that focus. Instead, they have become a company obsessed with Google+ and trying to find new ways to force users to use it. It's a dangerous strategy for them - either people will do it (possibly unhappily), or they risk driving people away from some of their other services. My personal opinion is that Google needs to get back to its roots that created Gmail and Google Maps and some of their other top tier services: doing what they do better and more uniquely than anyone else. Right now, they (and their partners) just have a scattershot approach and are hoping something sticks - you see it in all the different phones and how much Android keeps changing with every update. They don't have quite the consistent, comprehensive market strategy that you need to take on Apple in this market.
This is true, which is why you have to determine what kind of fundamentals are sustainable, and which aren't. AAPL has owned its market and has been able to sell at whatever they wanted, that dynamic is changing. At the same time, it is now being valued more than the entire US retail industry, with 2 products. Meanwhile, the stock is uber saturated and overowned. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever seen a mania in a stock with this kind of mega cap. CSCO was big in the 90s and John Chambers was walking on water back then, but even then they did not get the attention, adulation of an aapl. So yes, if they keep doing crazy numbers, then yes the stock will keep going up. If the dot coms kept growing at 1,000%, they would've never popped. I do not think the aapl story is sustainable. With the way the stock is trading, and just the attention that it is getting, and after personally trading through several bubbles/mini-bubbles, there is no doubt in my mind that this is another mania. With that said, mania can last a lot longer than a skeptic can stay solvent, so I am not saying short it. Heck, buy it for a week or two. But I would never invest in it anywhere near these levels.
