AAPL - Apple Inc.
| Previous Close | 271.46 |
| Open | 271.46 |
| Bid | 275.26 x 1200 |
| Ask | 275.33 x 1800 |
| Day's Range | 270.93 - 275.30 |
| 52 Week Range | 142.00 - 275.30 |
| Volume | 33,432,806 |
| Avg. Volume | 24,827,453 |
| Market Cap | 1.2T |
| Beta (5Y Monthly) | 1.23 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 23.14 |
| EPS (TTM) | 11.89 |
| Earnings Date | Jan 27, 2020 - Jan 31, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 3.08 (1.13%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | 2019-11-07 |
| 1y Target Est | 262.85 |
- Bloomberg
Apple Could Hit $325 a Share in Next Year, Says Ives of Wedbush
Dec.13 -- Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives and Bloomberg's Alistair Barr talk about how Apple will be impacted by the U.S. trade war deal with China. They appear on "Bloomberg Technology."
- Yahoo Finance Video
Twitter furious over Disney+ 'Home Alone' reboot as film taps its new star
‘Home Alone’ will be revived for Disney’s streaming service Disney+ and will star ‘JoJo Rabbit’ breakout star Archie Yates, but OG fans are still not impressed as criticism mounts around Hollywood's recent reboot craze. Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal breaks it down. Zack Guzman & Emily McCormick, along with former 'Bachelorette' star Jason Tartick join in on the conversation.
- Yahoo Finance
Why Twitter is furious over Disney+'s 'Home Alone' reboot
‘Home Alone’ will be revived for Disney’s streaming service Disney+ and will star ‘JoJo Rabbit’ breakout star Archie Yates.
- TechCrunch
Week in Review: Pet startups will be the death of Silicon Valley
If you're reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow my tweets here. Just as Pets.com symbolized the ridiculousness that came to frame the tech industry preceding the Dotcom bubble burst at the start of the century, dog-walking startup Wag might symbolize that SoftBank's earthquaking investment overexposure may extend far beyond a one-time WeWork mistake. This week, the WSJ reported that SoftBank had tossed in the towel on Wag, selling off its massive "nearly 50% stake" in the startup.
- Investor's Business Daily
Dow Jones Futures: After China Trade Deal, Which Sectors Will Lead Stock Market Rally?
Futures: The China trade deal is good news for the stock market rally. But which groups will join Apple, and chip stocks like AMD as market leaders?
- GuruFocus.com
Macroeconomics and Value Investing
As a value investor, I look to buy shares of an outstanding business at a discount to my estimated intrinsic value. Can top-down macroeconomics play a role in that process? Continue reading...
- GuruFocus.com
Apple Is a Great Company With a Dubious Valuation
The maker of the iPhone and MacBook has a proven track record for innovation, but it may soon struggle to justify its $1.2 trillion valuation Continue reading...
- GuruFocus.com
Urbem's 'Wonderful Business' Series: Craneware
An annuity SaaS opportunity Continue reading...
- Barrons.com
Barron’s 10 Stock Picks for 2020
FEATURES - MAIN U.S. stocks are ending the year on a high note. The S&P 500 index boasts a total return of 29% year to date—a great showing in the 11th year of an extraordinary bull market. With stocks near record highs, where can investors turn for 2020? Barron’s has identified 10 top stocks for the coming year, as it has every December for the past decade.
- Insider Monkey
Noked Capital: Best Performing Hedge Fund in 2019 Q3?
Every quarter Insider Monkey publishes its list of best performing hedge funds. Our goal is to identify the best hedge funds to replicate and thus avoid large hedge fund fees. I am going to explain this point a little bit later. First, last quarter's best hedge fund: Noked Capital. Noked Capital is an Israeli hedge […]
- MarketWatch
Americans keep gorging on debt, thanks to the Federal Reserve
Even only a slight increase in interest rates creates millions more in interest payments for consumers.
- Bloomberg
Google Culture War Escalates as Era of Transparency Wanes
(Bloomberg) -- Each morning, workers at Google get an internal newsletter called the “Daily Insider.” Kent Walker, Google’s top lawyer, set off a firestorm when he argued in the Nov. 14 edition that the 21-year old company had outgrown its policy of allowing workers to access nearly any internal document. “When we were smaller, we all worked as one team, on one product, and everyone understood how business decisions were made,” Walker wrote. “It's harder to give a company of over 100,000 people the full context on everything.”Many large companies have policies restricting access to sensitive information to a “need-to-know” basis. But in some segments of Google’s workforce, the reaction to Walker’s argument was immediate and harsh. On an internal messaging forum, one employee described the data policy as “a total collapse of Google culture.” An engineering manager posted a lengthy attack on Walker’s note, which he called "arrogant and infantilizing." The need-to-know policy "denies us a form of trust and respect that is again an important part of the intrinsic motivation to work here,” the manager wrote.The complaining also spilled into direct action. A group of Google programmers created a tool that allowed employees to choose to alert Walker with an automated email every time they opened any document at all, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The deluge of notifications was meant as a protest to what they saw as Walker’s insistence on controlling the minutiae of their professional lives. “When it comes to data security policies, we’ve never intended to prevent employees from sharing technical learnings and information and we are not limiting anyone’s ability to raise concerns or debate the company’s activities,” said a Google spokeswoman in an email. “We have a responsibility to safeguard our user, business and customer information and these activities need to be done in line with our policies on data security.” The actions are just the latest chapter in an internal conflict that has been going on for almost two years. About 20,000 employees walked out last fall over the company’s generous treatment of executives accused of sexual harassment, and a handful quit over Google’s work on products for the U.S. military and a censored search engine for the Chinese market. Earlier this year, Google hired IRI Consultants, a firm that advises employers on how to combat labor organizing, and it recently fired four employees for what it said was violation of its policies on accessing sensitive data.The extent of Google’s employee rebellion is hard to measure—the company has tried to portray it as the work of a handful of malcontents from the company’s junior ranks. Nor are the company’s message boards unilaterally supportive of revolt. “We want to focus on our jobs when we come into the workplace rather than deal with a new cycle of outrage every few days or vote on petitions for or against Google’s latest project,” wrote one employee on an internal message board viewed by Bloomberg News. Still, the company seems stuck in a cycle of escalation. Walker’s internal critics say his Nov. 14 email is part of a broader erosion of one of Google’s most distinctive traits—its extreme internal transparency. The fight also illustrates the lack of trust between Google’s leadership and some of its employees, according to interviews with over a dozen current and former employees, as well as internal messages shared with Bloomberg News on the condition it not publish the names of employees who participated.The conflict comes as Google is changing in other ways, too. On Dec. 3, Sundar Pichai, who took over as Google’s chief executive office in 2015, became the head of Alphabet, its parent company. His elevation marks the end of the active involvement of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who established Google’s distinctive culture when they founded the company as Stanford graduate students. Pichai has at times supported internal activism. He spoke at an employee protest against the Trump administration’s immigration policies and apologized to employees for Google’s track record on sexual harassment. His executives met repeatedly with critics of the company’s military work. Some Google managers began signaling that they're losing patience with internal activism even before the firings, according to one person who worked with them. Executives have not met with dissenting staff leadership in many weeks, according to one of the employees.While Walker wrote in the “Daily Insider” that organizations have to change as they grow, he simultaneously argued that the policies he described had always existed. “It was that way since the early days of Google, and it’s that way now,” he wrote. This particularly offended several long-time Googlers, who said on internal message boards that Walker’s comments didn’t square with their own memories. For some of them, the incident illustrated a broader breakdown in their trust of leadership. “I want to believe that executive management is saying everything—disclosing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,” said Bruce Hahne, a Google technical project manager. “I don’t think we are currently under those conditions.”Hahne, 51, doesn’t meet the Google management’s profile of internal protestors. He joined the company in 2005, a year after Pichai, partly because he was attracted to its mission to organize the world’s information. His disillusionment crept in gradually during the company’s myriad controversies. In an online essay, Hahne compared Google to a “rogue machine” that was “originally created for good but whose psyche has turned corrupt and destructive,” much like Hal 9000 from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. “You don’t treat a rogue machine like family,” wrote Hahne, “instead you come up with a plan, you disable or dismantle the dysfunctional parts of the machine, and you seek to reprogram the machine to serve its original purpose.” When it was founded two decades ago, Google established an unusual corporate practice. Nearly all of its internal documents were widely available for workers to review. A programmer working on Google search could for instance, dip into the software scaffolding of Google Maps to crib some elegant block of code to fix a bug or replicate a feature. Employees also had access to notes taken during brainstorming sessions, candid project evaluations, computer design documents, and strategic business plans. (The openness doesn’t apply to sensitive data such as user information.)The idea came from open-source software development, where the broader programming community collaborates to create code by making it freely available to anyone with ideas to alter and improve it. The philosophy came with technical advantages. “That interconnected way of working is an integral part of what got Google to where it is now,” said John Spong, a software engineer who worked at Google until this July.Google has flaunted its openness as a recruiting tool and public relations tactic as recently as 2015. "As for transparency, it’s part of everything we do," Laszlo Bock, then the head of Google human relations, said in an interview that year. He cited the immediate access staff have to software documentation, and said employees "have an obligation to make their voices heard."Google’s open systems also proved valuable for activists within the company, who have examined its systems for evidence of controversial product developments and then circulated their findings among colleagues. Such investigations have been integral to campaigns against the projects for the Pentagon and China. Some people involved in this research refer to it as "internal journalism."Management would describe it differently. In November, Google fired four engineers who it said had been carrying out “systematic searches for other employees’ materials and work. This includes searching for, accessing, and distributing business information outside the scope of their jobs.” The engineers said they were active in an internal campaign against Google’s work with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and denied violating the company’s data security policies.Rebecca Rivers, one of the fired employees, said she initially logged into Google’s intranet, a web portal open to all staff, and typed the terms: “CBP” and “GCP,” for Google Cloud Platform. “That’s how simple it was,” she said. “Anyone could have stumbled onto it easily,” she said.In an internal email describing the firings, Google accused one employee of tracking a colleague’s calendar without permission, gathering information about both personal and professional appointments in a way that made the targeted employee feel uncomfortable. Laurence Berland, one of the employees who was fired recently, acknowledged he had accessed internal calendars, but said they were not private. He used them to confirm his suspicions that the company was censoring employees. Berland, who first joined Google in 2005, added that he felt the company was punishing him for breaking a rule that didn’t exist at the time of the alleged violations. Google declined to identify the four employees it fired, but a company spokeswoman said the person who tracked calendars accessed unauthorized information.Other employees say they are now afraid to click on certain documents from other teams or departments because they are worried they could later be disciplined for doing so, a fear the company says is unfounded. Some workers have interpreted the policies as an attempt to stifle criticism of particular projects, which they allege amounts to a violation of the company’s code of conduct. These employees point to a clause in the code that actively encourages dissent: “Don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right—speak up!” Workers are "trying to report internally on problematic situations, and in some cases are not being allowed to make that information useful and accessible,” said Hahne. There is now a “climate of fear” inside Google offices, he said.Google’s permissive workplace culture became the prime example of Silicon Valley’s brand of employment. But transparency is hardly universal. Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. demand that workers operate in rigid silos to keep the details of sensitive projects from leaking to competitors. Engineers building a phone’s camera may have no idea what the people building its operating system are doing, and vice versa. Similar restrictions are common at government contractors and other companies working with clients who demand discretion.The specifics of Google’s business operations traditionally haven’t required this level of secrecy, but that is changing. Google’s cloud business in particular requires it to convince business clients it can handle sensitive data and work on discrete projects. This has brought it more in line with its secrecy-minded competitors. The protests themselves have also inspired new restrictions, as executives have looked to cut off the tools of the activists it argues are operating in bad faith.Google’s leaders have acknowledged the delicacy of adjusting a culture that has entrenched itself over two decades. “Employees today are much, much more active in the governance in the company,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO and chair, said at an event at Stanford University in October. Amy Edmonson, a professor of leadership and management at Harvard Business School, said that Google’s idealistic history increases the burden on its executives to bring along reluctant employees as it adopts more conventional corporate practices. “It’s just really important that if you’re going to do something that is perceived as change that you’re going to explain it,” she said.Bock, the company’s former HR director who is now CEO of Humu, a workplace software startup, suggested that Google hasn’t succeeded here. “Maybe Alphabet is just a different company than it used to be,” he wrote in an email to Bloomberg News. “But not everyone’s gotten the memo.” (Corrects Berland comment in 19th paragraph.)\--With assistance from Josh Eidelson.To contact the authors of this story: Ryan Gallagher in London at rgallagher76@bloomberg.netMark Bergen in San Francisco at mbergen10@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Joshua Brustein at jbrustein@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- MarketWatch
Trump didn’t win Time’s ‘Person of the Year,’ so he mocks the teen who did
Donald Trump supporters were left aghast — shocked! — last week when Professor Pamela Karlan had the nerve to wise crack about the president’s young son, Barron, during the impeachment hearing. After all, he’s just a kid. Greta Thunberg is also just a kid, but that didn’t stop Trump from roasting her on Twitter.
- Reuters
Google, Apple asked if apps like TikTok must disclose foreign ties
The chair of a U.S. congressional panel wrote to Alphabet's Google and to Apple on Friday to ask what if any disclosures mobile apps are required to make regarding overseas ties, a concern that follows reports of Chinese investment in popular apps such as TikTok and Grindr. Rep. Stephen Lynch, chairman of a subcommittee of the House of Representatives Oversight Committee, said in a statement that he had asked both Google and Apple to tell Congress whether they required app developers to disclose any non-U.S. ties. Concern over China acquiring sensitive data about U.S. citizens through social media apps is one of several sore areas in relations between the United States and China even as U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war with China fans suspicion between the world's two largest economies.
- Reuters
Wall Street Weekahead: Trade deal removes major hurdle for rally in Apple and tech
U.S. President Donald Trump's limited trade deal with China removes a major hurdle for Apple and other technology stocks that have already surged this year to record highs. China has agreed to boost imports of U.S. energy, pharmaceutical and agricultural products, although Chinese officials offered no details on the amount of U.S. goods Beijing had agreed to buy. If it is signed, Trump's long-awaited deal will be a relief to Apple, among the U.S. companies with the most to lose in the trade war between the world's two largest economies, along with chipmakers who make the components in its devices, which are mostly made in China.
- Financial Times
Huawei draws Hong Kong-style blowback
FT subscribers can click here to receive #techFT every day by email. Hong Kong protest tactics have come to mainland China. The spark? Huawei and the Chinese government’s alleged mistreatment of an ex-employee. ...
- GuruFocus.com
Leading US Indexes Close Higher Friday and for the Week of Dec. 13
S&P; 500 up 26.25% for the year Continue reading...
- GuruFocus.com
Top Technology Holdings of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway
Apple sets new record close as US and China reach trade deal Continue reading...
- TechCrunch
Apple and Spotify's podcasts come to Echo devices in the US
Amazon Alexa can now play podcasts from Apple, making Amazon's line of Echo devices the first third-party clients to support the Apple Podcasts service without using AirPlay. Before, this level of support was limited to Apple's HomePod. According to Amazon, the addition brings to Alexa devices Apple's library of more than 800,000 podcasts.
- InvestorPlace
Dow Jones Today: A Trade-Induced Hangover
Stocks surged Thursday on the back of movement on Phase I of a trade deal between the U.S. and China, but the party may have been a little too raucous because there was some hangover today as equities barely budged.Source: Provided by Finviz * The S&P 500 added just 0.01% * The Dow Jones Industrial Average eked out a gain of 0.01% * The Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.20% * For the second time this week and again on light news, American Express (NYSE:AXP) was in the spotlight, leading the Dow on what appears to be a technical breakoutSo here's where we're at with trade: Phase I appears to be a go and the tariffs that the U.S. was set to impose on Chinese imports on Sunday will be averted, explaining why Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) ascended to a record high today.Explaining why Thursday's ebullience waned today, the White House is leaving in place some of the tariffs it previously levied on Chinese goods.InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips"We have agreed to a very large Phase One Deal with China," said President Trump on Twitter. "They have agreed to many structural changes and massive purchases of Agricultural Product, Energy, and Manufactured Goods, plus much more. The 25% Tariffs will remain as is, with 7 1/2% put on much of the remainder."In speaking with the press today, Trump mentioned desire on China's part to get to work on Phase II of a trade package, but investors should not expect much action on that front over the near-term. * The 10 Worst Dividend Stocks of the Decade With just 13 of the 30 members higher in late trading, the Dow was likely reflecting expectations that Phase I is as good as gets for the time being. Fighting Off DataThe Commerce Depart said today that U.S. retail sales rose 0.2% last month, well below the 0.5% increase economists were expecting, a scenario almost universally blamed on Thanksgiving arriving a week later than usual. Taking some of the sting off that result was the October number being revised up to growth of 0.4%."The data suggest a slowdown in business investment and weakness in manufacturing is weighing more broadly on Americans' willingness to spend, which could mean a soft holiday-shopping season despite a relatively strong labor market, improved wage gains and record stock prices," according to Bloomberg.That's a somewhat gloomy take, the accuracy of which is challenged by the fact that on a day in which a weaker-than-expected retail sales number was revealed, Home Depot (NYSE:HD), McDonald's (NYSE:MCD) and Walmart (NYSE:WMT), Dow stocks with significant exposure to consumer spending, all traded higher. Speaking of the Consumer…Nike (NYSE:NKE) was another one of the Dow's consumer discretionary names trading modestly higher today. Nike is a name to watch over the next several days because the athletic apparel giant reports fiscal second-quarter results on Dec. 19.Wall Street is expecting year-over-year earnings per share growth of 10.5% on sales growth of 7.5%. Investors appear to be betting on a solid report from Nike because the stock is up more than 9% just this month. Gaming UpdateMicrosoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) added nearly 1% today after the company revealed plans for the Xbox Series X, the next generation of its popular video game console. As I've recently noted, 2020 is setting up to be a big year on the hardware upgrade front in the video game industry where Microsoft is one of the dominant players.Microsoft "said it will run 4K graphics at 60 frames per second, though the system has the capabilities to hit up to 120 FPS, with support for Variable Refresh Rate and 8K capability," reports Barron's.Both the Xbox Series X and the rival PlayStation 5 will be available during the 2020 holiday shopping season. Financial FunAs noted above American Express was a Dow leader today, but the same can't be said of fellow Dow financial components JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS). * 7 ETFs That Investors Charged Into This Year However, it's worth noting that the broader financial services sector is breaking out to multi-year highs and that the group remains attractively valued. More upside could be in store next year. Bottom Line on the Dow Jones TodayAlthough Nike reports next week, there's some time between now and the true start of fourth-quarter earnings season, but there are some data points for investors to mull in that regard."The estimated (year-over-year) earnings growth rate for CY 2019 is 0.3%, which is below the 10-year average (annual) earnings growth rate of 9.1%," notes FactSet. "If 0.3% is the actual growth rate for the year, it will mark the lowest annual growth rate for the index since CY 2015 (-0.6%). Six sectors are projected to report year-over-year growth in earnings, led by the Utilities and Health Care sectors."As of this writing, Todd Shriber did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. More From InvestorPlace * 2 Toxic Pot Stocks You Should Avoid * These 7 S&P 500 Stocks Will Deliver a Repeat Performance in the Next Decade * 7 Tech Stocks to Stuff Your Stocking With * 7 Sinfully Good Casino Stocks That Could Win the Jackpot in 2020 The post Dow Jones Today: A Trade-Induced Hangover appeared first on InvestorPlace.
- Barrons.com
There’s a Trade Deal With China. Here’s Why the Stock Market Isn’t Thrilled.
The U.S. and China say they have a “phase one” trade agreement, a positive for the global economy. But details were scarce and the deal hasn’t been signed, which means trade issues could continue to rattle markets.
- Benzinga
Apple Averted An iPhone Fiasco With Phase 1 Trade Deal
Stocks with significant exposure to China have been see-sawing amid conflicting reports concerning a resolution. With some clarity emerging with the clinching of a Phase 1 deal between the U.S. and China, the broader market and these stocks are likely to get a reprieve. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), which is reliant on China both as a production base and market for its products, is feeling the pinch, although the stock hasn't reacted much to the uncertainty.
- MarketWatch
Dow flat in spite of gains for shares of American Express, Visa
DOW UPDATE Shares of American Express and Visa are seeing strong returns Friday afternoon, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average into positive territory. The Dow (DJIA) was most recently trading 25 points higher (0.
- Barrons.com
Apple and Big TVs Are What’s Hot In The Electronics Aisle
Citi surveyed the managers of 50 U.S. retail and electronics stores and found the biggest upside surprise in wireless headphones, in particular Apple AirPods.
- Benzinga
Roku Leads In Subscriber Battle With Apple, Amazon
Roku, Inc. (NASDAQ: ROKU) is in the lead ahead of rival streaming players Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), according to the latest research from eMarketer. Roku will maintain its lead in the streaming space, and by 2023 it will have 111.7 million streaming players in the U.S. compared to Amazon Fire TV’s 88.3 million, according to eMarketer.
