Apple Inc. (AAPL) Message Board

1) Brian White cites Chinese 3G growth as a reason for his $888 PT: he points out China's 3G sub base rose 83% Y/Y in April to 293.1M, and is expected to hit 375M-400M by year's end. China Mobile (CHL - previous) had 120M 3G subs; China Unicom (CHU) had 92M, and China Telecom (CHA) 81M.
2) Taiwan's Economic Times reports Apple is testing 1.5" OLED displays for an iWatch, and that "market rumors" indicate Foxconn has received iWatch trial production orders.
3) Digitimes reports MacBook orders are expected to grow 20% Q/Q in Q2, as Apple launches new systems sporting Intel Haswell CPUs at June's WWDC conference.

2013 PT is 1750
2014 PT is 2100

A Senate report purports to show Apple used three Irish subsidiaries that have no tax residency in either Ireland or the U.S. to avoid paying taxes on some $74B in profits from 2009-2012.
Although the practice was legal and is to a certain extent commonplace, the report says AAPL's scheme was unprecedented in terms of both its complexity and its brashness in the "use of multiple affiliates that had no semblance of a physical presence."
The most glaring example is an Irish affiliate which reported profits of $30B over the period in question but paid no taxes whatsoever.
Tim Cook will defend the company (which he says has done nothing wrong) before Congress today.

SPDR Gold Shares has disposed of over 300 tons of gold so far this year, something Tom Lydon, the editor of ETF Trends, says is "amazing" and "incredible."

Bernstein Research predicted the company will report a “tepid quarter” when it posts results for the March period next Tuesday.
“If our estimates for this quarter and guidance are correct, and Apple does not announce that it is returning incremental cash on the call, we suspect Apple’s stock could come under further near-term pressure,” analyst Toni Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients.

With holdings of 19% of all gold mined, the plunge in the price of bullion has cost central banks $560B this year

Cirrus Logic (CRUS), which gets over half of its revenue from AAPL, issues a revenue warning for the March and June quarters (FQ4 and FQ1).

The mobile patent wars rage on: an ITC administrative law judge rules Samsung's phones infringe on two more claims of an Apple text-selection patent, while clearing Samsung of infringing a patent related to detecting whether a device is plugged into a microphone jack. In October, the judge ruled Samsung infringed on several Apple patents. A final commission ruling is expected in August. Meanwhile, a German court has invalidated Apple's slide-to-unlock patent, which is being asserted against both Motorola and Samsung.

"It takes time. Individuals move and react slowly. Guess we're just at the beginning of the process and the great bull market in stocks around the world will last for many years. I'm not worried," says Mobius.

The main reason, according to Mobius, is the lack of a viable alternative investment. "I do not understand why people continue to invest in bonds that give a yield of 0.5% or 1% at best. Cash is also a big mistake to hold while having a lot of good stocks that give dividends in the 3% yield. "

A lot of Apple's die-hard fans aren't happy with the hiring of Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch.
John Gruber calls Lynch a "a bozo, a bad hire," citing his past support for Flash. An old video of Lynch pretending to blow up an iPhone isn't going over well either.
But AppleInsider's Daniel Eran Dilger points out Lynch's history with Apple goes well beyond Flash: he also developed Mac software at prior employers Frame and Macromedia, and created UI elements for old Apple spinoff General Magic.

Today's economic calendar:
8:30 Initial Jobless Claims
9:00 PMI Manufacturing Index Flash
9:00 FHFA House Price Index
9:45 Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index
10:00 Existing Home Sales
10:00 Philly Fed Business Outlook
10:00 Leading Indicators
10:30 EIA Natural Gas Inventory
4:30 PM Money Supply
4:30 PM Fed Balance Sheet Comment!

AAPL and SPY used to have a strong correlation.
With AAPL market cap down this correlation is getting weaker.
In any case my stock market (coal mine) canary is
** I Know First algorithmic system** signaled to sell AAPL
on October 15

Many US economic indicators are positive including truck tonnage rise, good unemployment report, machinery investments
S&P 500 is up more than 12% from last December.

BUY BACK your stock:
Warren Buffett recalled a conversation with Steve Jobs a few years ago: "When Steve called me, I said, 'Is your stock cheap?' He said, 'yes.' I said, 'Do you have more cash than you need?' He said, 'a little.' [laughs] I said, 'then buy back your stock.' He didn't ... But if you could buy dollar bills for 80 cents, it's a very good thing to do." He also added: "Berkshire has gone down 50 percent four times in its history. When that happens, if you've got money you buy it. You just keep working on building the value."