A funny thing happened to AAPL’s inexorable trajectory to zero dollars a share.
If you play the ponies (otherwise known as investing in individual securities) and follow Apple, you probably heard that the failure that is the iPhone X (spoiler: not a failure) was driving Apple’s stock ever downward. Let’s review.
Oh, come on. It’ll be fun.
On April 27th, CNet moaned:
Apple’s stock has dropped about 8 percent over the past two months. It closed Monday at $165.26 and was ticking upward slightly in premarket trading Tuesday.
As the Macalope noted at the time, he’s not sure why two months was supposed to be a meaningful amount of time other than picking a point when Apple’s stock was very high so you could maximize the “Oh, how the mighty have fallen” factor. If it was worth noting then, however, it’s probably also worth noting that as of close on Thursday, AAPL’s now up 6.5 percent from that February position CNet thought was so important. But, frankly, the Macalope thinks these short-term “gotcha” games are about as fun as playing Secret Hitler with actual Nazis.
“Ha-ha! You are the actual Nazi in real life, and yet it turned out I was the Nazi in the game! How fun. Oh, you are still trying to exterminate people, that’s less fun.”
Two months is pretty absurd. But you know what’s even more absurd? A lot less than two months. Let’s go back to December 26th when BGR was warning how much trouble Apple was in because the Galaxy S9 was coming a month early. Here’s the lede:
Apple shares are down nearly 3 percent on Tuesday, following a report that the company is planning to slash forecasts for iPhone X sales in the first quarter of 2018.
It’s hard to imagine that the iPhone X was a failure even before Christmas. But, if your stock doesn’t have excellent one-day performance every day, well, then, how could it possibly be a good investment? Since AAPL’s position on December 22nd is an important point of comparison, however, let’s note that the stock is now up 8.6 percent from where it was then.
To be clear, AAPL’s position now isn’t a very important position the stock should be judged by, either. A lot of the reason it’s up right now is because very-rich-guy Warren Buffett bought a whole bunch of the stock and if a very rich guy did it, it must be a good thing to do. Here’s what he said about why he was investing in AAPL:
The idea that you’re going to spend loads of time trying to guess how many iPhone X … are going to be sold in a 3 month period totally misses the point. …
Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it’s going to rain next year. They buy it because they think it’s a good investment over 10 or 20 years.
That’s what the Macalope’s been saying!
Wait. Is the Macalope Warren Buffett?!
Uhhh… no.
No. He just checked his house. He’s not Warren Buffett. Nnnope. Whew. Not even close.
Eeeyikes. Alfalfa everywhere.