It's just another BS article wrapped up and tailored to make it sound nice and reasonable. This is really your typical "I love you but I'm breaking up with you" but this time it's supposedly the stock instead of the device.
If the author made his investments to INVEST based on the same kind of thinking he's now claiming tells him he should be selling, then he never really knew or understood:
- What he was investing in
- Why his $35/share cost basis (which sounds low, but "isn't" for truly long term investors) is now hovering around $193. He's made more than 5X his original investment PLUS dividends the past few years.
There's actually nothing "wrong" with his logic to sell, but to me, the only logic is to sell based on his excellent gain and to follow conventional thinking. 5X+ on the original investment is great. All conventional wisdom says, it's sane to sell at that point.
His arguments for selling are a different story.
1. Debunked. The same "law of large numbers" was applied when we were in the $600-$700 pre-split range. It was, OMG, Apple can't grow any more because it's already so large, impossible, blah blah and blah. So here we are and it's pretty much doubled since then. No pundit subscribing to the "megacap multiplier" argument would have said this was possible.
2. Longer upgrade cycle - for him. Who cares. He takes it as a disadvantage that the products are so good they last too long. Other people excoriate Apple for "trying to slow down my old device so I have to buy a new one", so who's right? He's making assumptions about millions (actually 10's/100's of millions of other Apple owners) that has no basis in fact. It sounds nice in a "story" to write but that's the end of it. He's forgetting that Apple now takes the low end of the market through new devices at lower prices (6SE) and, refurbs in other markets. It's not all about the highest price devices.
3. ASP could be peaking. Blah blah. And then maybe not. And so what. This is like how people always used to complain about margins. Apple could never sustain their high margins; the moaning and gnashing of teeth by the analysts. Who cares of there are some variations from quarter to quarter? It's almost impossible for there not to be.
4. Repatriation catalyst "over". (a) If true, so? (b) But not really true. Buyback will be executing quickly and there may be more added. So this is silly.
5. Behind in the home speaker market - also silly. (Behind in a small market that sells "lots" (but how many really) of Alexas at low prices?)
6. Buffet bump: so? Unclear how much and what to make of it. It wasn't the first such bump, won't necessarily be the last.
7. Apple deserves to trade at a below-market multiple. (a) Why, seriously, and (b) BUT IT ALREADY DOES and has for many years.
8. Dividends and buybacks don't excite. (Sure they don't. You're a bad investor). It's NOT FINANCIAL ENGINEERING when the company is throwing off so many HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF CASH that it needs to return that to the SHAREHOLDERS. This reason is as nonsensical as many of his others.
9. Other FAANG exposure, sure, whatever. This is also not a reason.
10. I've got better places for the money. Please, sell, take your 5X gain which is by all means quite nice. But don't pretend that your 10 reasons here are well-reasoned reasons to sell your entire investment.
*****
My take is: clickbait article, wrapped different so it feels nice and genuine. If you take it at face value - sure, why not sell and get out. But these are as a whole, click-baitish reasons.
Again taking this at face value: it feels like he got lucky and really had no understanding of why he bought to begin with and why it went up the way it did. Anyone who throws out "fanboy" in this kind of writing loses all credibility right from the start. No genuine Apple investor, who understands the business, the company, and the products, would ever use that term.
Maybe he should have said he was one of the "faithful".
And the, in the end, "I could be making a mistake." So more like, "I threw this article together to appeal to a certain type of reader, made some ill-considered statements, hopefully will be read by a wide audience, and none of it matters anyway because I really have no conviction or any idea what I'm talking about".
Blah blah.
How many times, these writers. Rinse, and repeat.