Apple Inc. (AAPL) Message Board

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. "

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!

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.

AIG: Cup and handle day pattern

Sentiment: Strong Buy

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.

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

"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.

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

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.

Apple, based on the revenue growth, it is clear that iPhone and iPad adoption has been ferocious in the last five years.
However that growth is slowing and projected to slow even more markedly in the future. More worrisome is the even faster deceleration of net income growth. The reasons are twofold. First are the markets themselves. While neither the smart phone nor the table markets are saturated, neither market is still in hyper growth mode either.
Secondly, competition. The effect of better competition can clearly be seen in this chart showing Apple's net margin over the last 5 years. There has been an alarming decrease in the margins starting early last year, which is indicative of increased competitive and pricing pressures. The better competition forces Apple to bring products out at more aggressive price points.
The iPad mini, Mac re-pricing and continued iPhone 4 sales from the carriers despite the release of the 4S and 5 are all evidence of this.

RBC speculating an iWatch could add $7B-$9B in revenue and $1.50-$2.00 in EPS for the company.

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."

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.

LDK@1.99 will look the same as LDK@0.88 looks today: a steal

Sentiment: Strong Buy

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).