Not so quick Steve

Even though I dislike their products in a romper room/fischer price irritation kind of way, Apple has made me some money and lots of people like them. In turn I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Steve for lining my pockets and for all of you guys who own ipods for keeping their revs up.

Having said that, I'm not so sure anymore that the iPhone is going to be the slam dunk that a lot of people think it is. Here's why:

5) It's too expensive and Steve is a greedy pig that doesn't give stuff away
4) Cingular is the only US carrier
3) It's a closed system and the other carriers will be really pissed about not getting a good cut of the revenues and won't be able to push their own music stores
2) There's going to be a bunch of stuff coming from LG, Motorola and Nokia that does the same stuff and flash memory/lcd prices are plummeting so fat margins will be gone
1) NVidia and Marvel have killer chips that they will license to everybody that does stuff like the proto phone below



I'm not saying that it's going to fail but it's not a slam dunk just yet.

Sandbagged by AAPL

As some of you have so wisely pointed out, Apple sandbagged their investors with a hyper-pessimistic second quarter projection despite a record breaking/blistering first quarter. I'm sure that they did this on purpose to take some air out of the stock so that it would have a soft landing instead of a crash when the options scandal hits the news again.

What is really interesting here is that the market was pulling the shares down yesterday well before the news was public when all along it should have been rising. This means that people at the hedge funds knew something bad was highly likely. Smells really fishy to me considering the rest of us were sure that the quarter was going to be stellar. Such is life and so we live and learn to watch for this early warning.

Cramer says hold on AAPL, I am saying screw that - I'm taking the money and running until the stock bottoms out and then getting back in when it's safer and cheaper. I still made $10-$12/share so I'm not feeling bad but I don't want to be greedy and get crushed by the stampede of panic that's sure to ensue.

I am selling AAPL today at around the pre-market price of 93 bucks and buying back in probably this summer or when the stock goes under 80 which ever comes first. At the same time, I'm dumping Intel and Verisign at cost but staying on for the ride with DivX and Microsoft.


I'm still bullish on the long term prospects of Apple and Intel but the short term prospects are bleak. Had they not tempered the next quarter, the stock would have bumped up by 5-10 bucks. Smart move though all things considered but unexpected. This is a great opportunity to sit back and wait for both to bottom out or dance sideways for a couple of quarters.

Yeah, I know that I've flip flopped on this in less than 24 hours but sometimes you gotta change your route to get to the same destination.

AAPL on the move

Did any of you listen to me and buy AAPL shares at $82.50????


They're at $88 and rising right now :)


And the iPhone is HOT!! This stock is going to $130-150 in the next months and double over the next year. As much as I dislike Apple products, this is the killer we've been waiting for.

If you'd have listened to me, you'd have made 10% on your investment in 3 weeks.

The Golden Apple

So two weeks ago we bought 120 imaginary Apple shares at $82.55 and they dipped down to $80 before bouncing up to $84.84.

So far we're up about $275 or about 3% in 2 weeks. This is better than most banks would give you in a year. But wait a second - the ride has just begun. A tremendous quarter is just ending, Macworld is next week with a bunch of new products, iTunes store is on fire, iPods were a huge seller and Macbooks were flying off shelves.

Even Goldman Sachs is tripping out. The markets will open tomorrow morning with a lot of pent up demand and the stock should jump another couple of bucks, still a deal if you are ready for a 6 month or 1 year ride. Sure there are a couple of lawsuits, nothing big yet and they will take years to resolve.