Mav
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Post by Mav on Jan 24, 2014 13:23:47 GMT -8
Didn't _feel_ like an up week.
That the powerful play rangebound purgatory goes on, and you Apple may contribute a verse resolution to this mess by next Tuesday.
Anyway, the bar's open.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2014 13:37:44 GMT -8
Well it would have been a down week without Icahns chest thumping.
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Post by rob_london on Jan 24, 2014 14:46:48 GMT -8
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2014 17:24:13 GMT -8
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icam
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Post by icam on Jan 24, 2014 17:58:40 GMT -8
Good luck to everybody on Monday. Since I'm expecting the TC and PO show on Monday to be very positive, I'm exposed way aggressively long. But, after last years 300 point joy ride, and the usual reaction to TC's conference calls, I'm prepared for the FUD's to find a way to point out the negatives and exploit the weak shareholders. I've learned my lesson and have purchased downside insurance in the form of Bear Put Spreads. Thanks to lovemyipad for the education on the merits of having some downside insurance. Being positioned to make money either way they move the stock really does take the edge off the pre earnings anxiety.
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Jan 24, 2014 18:32:41 GMT -8
The reason this is big, is 1) If Apple could get mass adoption by retailers, it just adds to the stickiness of iOS and 2) there is quite a revenue stream in Apple becoming a Visa/Mastercard transaction enabler with its 100's of millions of customers. And why would there be mass adoption by retailers? Because Apple will charge less, yes, less per transaction than Visa and Mastercard do.
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Post by mcharliem on Jan 24, 2014 19:34:08 GMT -8
Good luck to everybody on Monday. Since I'm expecting the TC and PO show on Monday to be very positive, I'm exposed way aggressively long. But, after last years 300 point joy ride, and the usual reaction to TC's conference calls, I'm prepared for the FUD's to find a way to point out the negatives and exploit the weak shareholders. I've learned my lesson and have purchased downside insurance in the form of Bear Put Spreads. Thanks to lovemyipad for the education on the merits of having some downside insurance. Being positioned to make money either way they move the stock really does take the edge off the pre earnings anxiety. Generally speaking, the way to play earnings the past 4 quarters has been to be short vol through the announcements. I don't feel there's any reason to think otherwise this time, except vol seems a little low. It's especially noteworthy considering the vix is up almost 40% in the last 48 hrs and AAPL's vol has barely moved.
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Post by lovemyipad on Jan 24, 2014 19:45:19 GMT -8
Good luck to everybody on Monday. Since I'm expecting the TC and PO show on Monday to be very positive, I'm exposed way aggressively long. But, after last years 300 point joy ride, and the usual reaction to TC's conference calls, I'm prepared for the FUD's to find a way to point out the negatives and exploit the weak shareholders. I've learned my lesson and have purchased downside insurance in the form of Bear Put Spreads. Thanks to lovemyipad for the education on the merits of having some downside insurance. Being positioned to make money either way they move the stock really does take the edge off the pre earnings anxiety. GOOD JOB!!! Proud of ya!!!
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Post by archibaldtuttle on Jan 24, 2014 19:47:15 GMT -8
The reason this is big, is 1) If Apple could get mass adoption by retailers, it just adds to the stickiness of iOS and 2) there is quite a revenue stream in Apple becoming a Visa/Mastercard transaction enabler with its 100's of millions of customers. And why would there be mass adoption by retailers? Because Apple will charge less, yes, less per transaction than Visa and Mastercard do. I'm very excited about apple fixing payments. However, there's something I really don't understand about the discussion of apple entering this space. Yes, apple has 100s of millions of accounts with credit cards on file. However, if they implement mobile payments with those credit card accounts, then MC/Visa/Amex will still get their same processing fees, so where's the room for apple to make money and create efficiencies? In order for apple to take home a processing fee and lower costs for merchants, it seems like they'll have to get customers to connect *bank accounts* directly to their apple IDs or passbook. Not debit cards, because those still deal with the credit card processors, but actual bank account electronic transfers. As far as I know, apple has exactly zero accounts with that kind of information. What am I missing here?
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JDSoCal
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Aspiring oligarch
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Post by JDSoCal on Jan 24, 2014 20:49:44 GMT -8
The reason this is big, is 1) If Apple could get mass adoption by retailers, it just adds to the stickiness of iOS and 2) there is quite a revenue stream in Apple becoming a Visa/Mastercard transaction enabler with its 100's of millions of customers. And why would there be mass adoption by retailers? Because Apple will charge less, yes, less per transaction than Visa and Mastercard do. I'm very excited about apple fixing payments. However, there's something I really don't understand about the discussion of apple entering this space. Yes, apple has 100s of millions of accounts with credit cards on file. However, if they implement mobile payments with those credit card accounts, then MC/Visa/Amex will still get their same processing fees, so where's the room for apple to make money and create efficiencies? In order for apple to take home a processing fee and lower costs for merchants, it seems like they'll have to get customers to connect *bank accounts* directly to their apple IDs or passbook. Not debit cards, because those still deal with the credit card processors, but actual bank account electronic transfers. As far as I know, apple has exactly zero accounts with that kind of information. What am I missing here? Well of course what we are missing is the details of the release from Tim Cook. But my guess is that Apple will become a Pay Pal-like processor, which already debits directly from one's bank account - but you can also use your credit card or Bill Me Later, an interest-free loan. The key is getting your account funded and running a balance so you can make purchases (although there may be a way to make payments like with Bill Me Later). But people trusted Pay Pal, an unknown when it launched, so they will trust Apple, which already has their credit cards anyway. And I'd imagine those who already have active Apple accounts will merely have the option added to "fund my iPayments account" when they log on to iTunes or the Apple Store. Maybe there will also be a special type of Apple gift card, the Apple Payments Card, which can top off one's account and be used to buy anything anywhere there is an Apple payments beacon or whatever they call it, e.g., iPayments (with flags proudly flying outside, "We Accept iPayments and EBT"). And why would the retailers like Target and Wal-Mart not be for every new iOS user coming into their stores on December 26th and trying out their new phones at their registers? A new revenue stream. Great for parents who don't want to give their kids credit cards, but want them to have some discretionary money. An easy sell, and I think Apple will have some major chains on board before launch. And those left out will be scrambling to sign on. Maybe Apple will even make a dealio with Pay Pal (rumor has it eBay wanted to spin it off anyway, so...). Imagine seeing all those iPhones held up to the credit/debit swipe machines as you stand in line, feeling all warm and fuzzy as a stockholder. The beauty is, the paradigm would be much harder to copy by competitors like Google and Android, because of the lack of an ecosystem (plus, most of their users are Luddites who still write checks at the express lane at the grocery store, or are too cheap to spend money, digital or otherwise). Have you ever seen someone do an NFC purchase in your life? Another reason Samsung will want to dump Android for Tizen. So glad I have Monday off to sit and relax and take in the earnings spectacle.
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Post by appledoc on Jan 25, 2014 1:33:07 GMT -8
The reason this is big, is 1) If Apple could get mass adoption by retailers, it just adds to the stickiness of iOS and 2) there is quite a revenue stream in Apple becoming a Visa/Mastercard transaction enabler with its 100's of millions of customers. And why would there be mass adoption by retailers? Because Apple will charge less, yes, less per transaction than Visa and Mastercard do. I'm very excited about apple fixing payments. However, there's something I really don't understand about the discussion of apple entering this space. Yes, apple has 100s of millions of accounts with credit cards on file. However, if they implement mobile payments with those credit card accounts, then MC/Visa/Amex will still get their same processing fees, so where's the room for apple to make money and create efficiencies? In order for apple to take home a processing fee and lower costs for merchants, it seems like they'll have to get customers to connect *bank accounts* directly to their apple IDs or passbook. Not debit cards, because those still deal with the credit card processors, but actual bank account electronic transfers. As far as I know, apple has exactly zero accounts with that kind of information. What am I missing here? I don't know what they're going to do, but I'll never connect my bank account to them, or drop any of my outstanding credit cards. I take in thousands in rewards every year from them. Apple won't be able to replace that.
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Post by artman1033 on Jan 25, 2014 5:01:14 GMT -8
currently with 1292 views.
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Post by phoebear611 on Jan 25, 2014 5:23:37 GMT -8
The only thing better on Superbowl Sunday (or Saturday or Monday ... hope weather cooperates) watching Denver beat Seattle would be some ad from AAPL that teases us about something new and unexpected. It's been 30 years since that 1984 Superbowl commercial....what are the chances we get Throwback Superbowl Sunday? A girl can dream, can't she?
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Post by michelc on Jan 25, 2014 5:33:30 GMT -8
I'll bet I'm very excited about apple fixing payments. However, there's something I really don't understand about the discussion of apple entering this space. Yes, apple has 100s of millions of accounts with credit cards on file. However, if they implement mobile payments with those credit card accounts, then MC/Visa/Amex will still get their same processing fees, so where's the room for apple to make money and create efficiencies? In order for apple to take home a processing fee and lower costs for merchants, it seems like they'll have to get customers to connect *bank accounts* directly to their apple IDs or passbook. Not debit cards, because those still deal with the credit card processors, but actual bank account electronic transfers. As far as I know, apple has exactly zero accounts with that kind of information. What am I missing here? I'll bet that apple have a really low rate when it come to credit card fees on iTunes . What they could do is let the merchant have the same rate as them + a small fee . Merchant then pay a lower fee that he pay now to the processor company, customer still pay using his credit card and accumulate points. Itune became then another form of payment on the merchant customer bypassing the middle man ( cc processors) More secure for the customer, more money for the merchant, more fidelity for apple. Everyone win
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Post by greyfox15 on Jan 25, 2014 6:06:54 GMT -8
Nice NYTimes 30 old interview: The 30-Year-Old Macintosh and a Lost Conversation With Steve Jobs By NICK BILTON Steven P. Jobs, left and John Sculley presented the Macintosh computer at an Apple shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Calif, in January 1984. Associated Press Steven P. Jobs, left and John Sculley presented the Macintosh computer at an Apple shareholder meeting in Cupertino, Calif, in January 1984.
On a late-November day in 1983, Steven Levy, then a freelance journalist for Rolling Stone, got into a car outside 10460 Bandley Drive, in Cupertino, Calif.
As the vehicle sped away from the white office building, Mr. Levy looked at the driver and said hello to Steven P. Jobs, then the young, spry co-founder of Apple, who immediately responded with a voluble tirade about the magazine Mr. Levy worked for.
As he zigzagged Cupertino’s streets toward a pizza restaurant, Mr. Jobs complained that a coming article about the Macintosh — a computer that was still two months away from being announced — would not be on the cover of Rolling Stone, but rather stuffed inside a planned issue. Mr. Jobs groused that the magazine was, as Mr. Levy remembers, an expletive, and said a previous cover article about MTV was an expletive, too.
Mr. Levy couldn’t get a word in, but when he finally did, he explained that he had written the MTV cover article Mr. Jobs hated so much.
“He immediately changed the subject,” Mr. Levy recalled with a chuckle in a phone interview.
For the next couple of hours, over pizza with olives, Mr. Levy interviewed Mr. Jobs about the coming Mac computer, his design philosophy, a breakup which had left Mr. Jobs love-sick and, ominously, struggles with Apple’s board over the direction of the company. (Mr. Jobs would be fired two years later.)
The interview was a rare and raw moment for Mr. Jobs, where he bared his true feelings on the record with a reporter.
Macintosh computers lined up at a production facility in March 1984. Paul Sakuma/Associated Press Macintosh computers lined up at a production facility in March 1984. While some snippets of the 11,500-word conversation were used in the Rolling Stone feature (which never did make it to the cover), until now, the transcript has been tucked away in one of Mr. Levy’s files.
To celebrate the 30-year anniversary of the Mac, Mr. Levy said Friday that he was appending the transcript, which is “essentially unexpurgated,” in an updated Kindle version of the book about the birth of the Macintosh, “Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer that Changed Everything.”
It’s clear in the interview that Mr. Jobs was struggling with a few demons. For one, he was upset about a recent article in Time magazine that described him as petulant and unkind. And he blamed his obsession with work for a breakup.
“I just had a romance that I really care about, a lot — I mean, a lot — go up in smoke. Because of the stress, and the sort of other woman that Macintosh is,” Mr. Jobs said.
Yet what is apparent in the discussion is that Mr. Jobs knows he is about to introduce a computer that is going to change the world. He discusses the graphics and the design of the machine with the passion of an artist describing a newly completed masterpiece. “I mean, it’s incredibly great,” Mr. Jobs said when asked about the Mac. “It’s insanely great.”
The Times’s January 1984 Review of the Macintosh: “Apple Weighs In With Macintosh” The Macintosh he was so excited about would be the world’s first mass-market personal computer that had a graphical user interface and a mouse.
“It’s hard to put yourself in the mindset, to look back at the way things were back then,” Mr. Levy told me when I asked about re-reading the interview after all these years. “Computers had these glowing green letters back then and there was no Internet.”
But Mr. Jobs seemed to know exactly the kind of impact the Mac would have, and the team of people who had helped make it a reality.
He repeatedly refers to the team that built the Mac as “pirates,” and then says a quote that became famous years later: “Better to be a pirate than join the navy.” It’s also clear that Mr. Jobs and his band of over-worked pirates had agonized over every detail of the computer, even analyzing the details of the manual.
There are some aspects of the 30-year-old interview that might answer some unanswerable questions about what Mr. Jobs would have done with his life if he were still alive today.
When Mr. Levy told Mr. Jobs that there was “speculation” that he might go into politics, Mr. Jobs replied that he had no desire to enter the public sector and noted that the private sector could have a greater influence on society. “I’m one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did,” Mr. Jobs said.
Accessories for an original 128K Macintosh computer included an disk for the operating system, as well as a guided tour of the system. Brian Snyder/Reuters Accessories for an original 128K Macintosh computer included an disk for the operating system, as well as a guided tour of the system. One thing Mr. Levy was continually searching for in the interview, was what was driving Mr. Jobs — a question that was echoed in 2011 in “Steve Jobs,” the biography written by Walter Isaacson.
In the 1983 interview, it’s clear that money isn’t the answer. Mr. Jobs talked about his net worth falling by $250 million in six months. ”I’ve lost a quarter billion dollars! You know, that’s very character building,” he said, and notes that at some point, counting your millions of dollars is “just stupid.”
Mr. Levy pressed again. “The question I was getting at is, what’s driving you here?”
“Well, it’s like computers and society are out on a first date in this decade, and for some crazy reason we’re just in the right place at the right time to make that romance blossom,” Mr. Jobs replied, noting that the 1980s were the beginning of the computing revolution. “We can make them great, we can make a great product that people can easily use.”
Such passion is something that would follow Mr. Jobs through his career, and what he said next seemed to be the driving force behind that passion.
“I look at myself as an artist if anything,” Mr. Jobs said. “Sort of a trapeze artist.”
“With or without a net?” Mr. Levy asked.
“Without,” Mr. Jobs replied, and then he said one of the more profound things in the interview: ”You know we’re constantly taking. We don’t make most of the food we eat, we don’t grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.”
Given that we’re still talking about the Mac computer 30 years later, and a long list of other products Mr. Jobs helped create, it’s apparent that he was able to add something to that pool.
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Post by Red Shirted Ensign on Jan 25, 2014 8:49:27 GMT -8
The only thing better on Superbowl Sunday (or Saturday or Monday ... hope weather cooperates) watching Denver beat Seattle would be some ad from AAPL that teases us about something new and unexpected. It's been 30 years since that 1984 Superbowl commercial....what are the chances we get Throwback Superbowl Sunday? A girl can dream, can't she? Hey Phoebes, The buzz around Seattle is that Richard Sherman is the new Apple spokesperson. Adios Peter coyote, Robin Williams, Bryan Cranston... The new ad has Sherman running down the field screaming "think different" and other colorful phrases while tossing confused Denver receivers Iphone 5s handsets. He refers to the Galaxy handsets as "mediocre" and ends up by signaling Peyton Manning to "call him"....or some such gesture. Should be big...
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Post by phoebear611 on Jan 25, 2014 9:27:45 GMT -8
Very funny Red ~ actually, quite hilarious ~ you're killing me! I hope AAPL never goes the way of many corporates and has athletes or any famous personalities endorsing them (I don't mean acting in their commercials but truly endorsing) - somehow some crap always comes out and it's never good. They should always stand on their own merits and promote their own products .
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Post by gtrplyr on Jan 25, 2014 9:55:35 GMT -8
currently with 1292 views. You can just FEEL the amount of confidence Tim has by listening to his voice. I have always thought and still do that Steve Jobs made an excellent choice with regards to his replacement. Monday should be interesting but either way I'm not losing hope of Apple having an incredible '14 .... now hopefully AAPL will follow suit. Cheers to the longs !
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bud777
fire starter
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Post by bud777 on Jan 25, 2014 10:40:38 GMT -8
I keep my portfolios at Fidelity because I don't want a broker contacting me. I have been there for probably 20 years. Occasionally, when the board is quiet, I will go to their site and log in to look for anything relevant to Apple. Yesterday, I was looking at their research reports. Keep in mind that Fidelity is, if not the largest institutional holding of Apple, then certainly one of the largest. There were about 20 reports from different firms. The reports are rated for accuracy by a firm called Starmine. The highest ranked report for accuracy was from Jefferson Research. They ranked AAPL a HOLD. A fucking HOLD. So I dug a little deeper and read the report. They evidently rate based on an algorithm that compares performance from quarter to quarter and year to year. The HOLD was because they ranked Apple WEAKEST, their lowest rating, on the balance sheet. Think about that, the highest ranked analyst for the top institutional holder thinks Apple has a weak balance sheet!. I called Jefferson Research and asked a few questions. This "research" is a matter of having a computer generate a report based on the numbers. They generate the reports automatically for 2500 companies. Last year Apple had no debt, now they have 17 billion. That's it. End of analysis.
If the institutions are this superficial and if retail gives more importance to Icahn than to China Mobile, there are sheep waiting to be sheared
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Jan 25, 2014 12:26:28 GMT -8
I don't know what they're going to do, but I'll never connect my bank account to them, or drop any of my outstanding credit cards. I take in thousands in rewards every year from them. Apple won't be able to replace that. Of course Apple could add some rewards system, possibly for Apple products. But you do realize that all those rewards are doing is refunding you *part* of the higher prices you pay overall due to credit card transactions? There are an awful lot of people using debit cards out there not getting any rewards, and I've always wondered why some bank doesn't offer a debit rewards card (of course, since debit cards can be used as credit cards as well). Rewards credit cards tend to be for people with better credit (700+ FICOS), and a lot of people don't have that, especially after the credit bubble and housing bust. BTW, PayPal has over 140 million users ATM, and you can't open an account with them without linking a bank account.
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Post by ericinaustin on Jan 25, 2014 12:30:12 GMT -8
currently with 1292 views. You can just FEEL the amount of confidence Tim has by listening to his voice. I have always thought and still do that Steve Jobs made an excellent choice with regards to his replacement. Monday should be interesting but either way I'm not losing hope of Apple having an incredible '14 .... now hopefully AAPL will follow suit. Cheers to the longs ! I agree. They seem to be in VERY GOOD MOODS and I think that bodes well for what they plan to tell us on Monday.
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Post by Volvocoupe on Jan 25, 2014 12:36:42 GMT -8
I'm very excited about apple fixing payments. However, there's something I really don't understand about the discussion of apple entering this space. Yes, apple has 100s of millions of accounts with credit cards on file. However, if they implement mobile payments with those credit card accounts, then MC/Visa/Amex will still get their same processing fees, so where's the room for apple to make money and create efficiencies? In order for apple to take home a processing fee and lower costs for merchants, it seems like they'll have to get customers to connect *bank accounts* directly to their apple IDs or passbook. Not debit cards, because those still deal with the credit card processors, but actual bank account electronic transfers. As far as I know, apple has exactly zero accounts with that kind of information. What am I missing here? I don't know what they're going to do, but I'll never connect my bank account to them, or drop any of my outstanding credit cards. I take in thousands in rewards every year from them. Apple won't be able to replace that. I would think Apple would line-up the rewards programs before launch. They always enter a market with the best in category product. I don't think it has ever been otherwise. This is also why we don't have a "TV" yet. They haven't lined up the content yet.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2014 12:55:18 GMT -8
Anyone know the last time Apple had a Halt when they announced earnings? It seems with the new guidance and since everyone basically "knows" the range Apple will report in, that Halts haven't been happening much lately...has there been a halt since the "new guidance"? I'd sure love to see a halt and a report above $15 on Monday
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Jan 25, 2014 13:09:23 GMT -8
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Post by gtrplyr on Jan 25, 2014 13:09:35 GMT -8
Anyone know the last time Apple had a Halt when they announced earnings? It seems with the new guidance and since everyone basically "knows" the range Apple will report in, that Halts haven't been happening much lately...has there been a halt since the "new guidance"? I'd sure love to see a halt and a report above $15 on Monday Halts always make me nervous ..... it already bad enough waiting .... I've come to really have a love/hate relationship with earnings announcements
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2014 16:19:41 GMT -8
Am I the only one that expects a blowout? I'm expecting something in the $15 - $15.50 range...I believe Japan and first quarter China Sales more than made up for any slowness in the US or in other parts of the world. I also think ASP will be a little higher because of the iPhone 5S mix. I also think the iPad Air is a much better upgrade this year than the iPad 4 was vs the iPad 3. I don't know...I'm expecting big things this quarter, I realize PO doesn't want to come across as sandbagging again, but I think beating your predictions once and a while isn't a bad thing...they might even be setting up for it after a bad (for the stock) 2013.
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bud777
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Post by bud777 on Jan 25, 2014 17:08:15 GMT -8
Am I the only one that expects a blowout? I'm expecting something in the $15 - $15.50 range...I believe Japan and first quarter China Sales more than made up for any slowness in the US or in other parts of the world. I also think ASP will be a little higher because of the iPhone 5S mix. I also think the iPad Air is a much better upgrade this year than the iPad 4 was vs the iPad 3. I don't know...I'm expecting big things this quarter, I realize PO doesn't want to come across as sandbagging again, but I think beating your predictions once and a while isn't a bad thing...they might even be setting up for it after a bad (for the stock) 2013. While I am optimistic over the long haul, I think Apple as a lot to lose if they blow out guidance. The fact that they felt it necessary to make an revision announcement last quarter that they would be close to the top of guidance tells me they are serious about stopping the wild speculation that haunted them in previous years. Given that there has been no announcement this time, it doesn't make sense that they would want a blowout. I do expect then to be within 5% of the top of guidance in revenue and gross margin. And I expect strong guidance for next quarter. but WTFDIK. I am expecting that there will be a pop based on strong guidance, maybe up to 580, then a long erosive slide until April. If the market didn't react to China Mobile, I don't see them reacting to a new product announcement, at least not for a quarter or so. I have tried to make these estimates uncontaminated by actual data or reason.
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Post by gtrplyr on Jan 25, 2014 18:46:45 GMT -8
Anyone thinking they will raise the dividend soon ? We are still in the early stages so there isn't much precedent set with regards to how that is handled. Last year it was announced in April but there is so much talk about the cash hoard at this point I would hope the matter gets addressed earlier. I'm confident there will be an increase in '14 but when ? and more importantly .... how much Last time the dividend was increased 15.1% so I'm guessing we are going to $3.50.
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Post by mcharliem on Jan 25, 2014 18:53:42 GMT -8
Anyone thinking they will raise the dividend soon ? We are still in the early stages so there isn't much precedent set with regards to how that is handled. Last year it was announced in April but there is so much talk about the cash hoard at this point I would hope the matter gets addressed earlier. I'm confident there will be an increase in '14 but when and more importantly .... how much Last time the dividend was increased 15.1% so I'm guessing we are going to $3.50. I posted to this earlier. The market (take that for what it's worth) is pricing in a small chance (10-20%) of a dividend increase on this February's dividend. If there is no increase, I'd expect a much greater chance being priced in for May. Regarding the question about last time AAPL was halted, I think they halted it both last January and last April, but not July or October. If we see a halt on Monday, my guess is it's much more likely to be positive than negative.
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JDSoCal
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Post by JDSoCal on Jan 25, 2014 19:35:32 GMT -8
While I am optimistic over the long haul, I think Apple as a lot to lose if they blow out guidance. The fact that they felt it necessary to make an revision announcement last quarter that they would be close to the top of guidance tells me they are serious about stopping the wild speculation that haunted them in previous years. Given that there has been no announcement this time, it doesn't make sense that they would want a blowout. I do expect then to be within 5% of the top of guidance in revenue and gross margin. And I expect strong guidance for next quarter. but WTFDIK. I am expecting that there will be a pop based on strong guidance, maybe up to 580, then a long erosive slide until April. If the market didn't react to China Mobile, I don't see them reacting to a new product announcement, at least not for a quarter or so. I have tried to make these estimates uncontaminated by actual data or reason. A shot in the dark here. Keep in mind that SEC filings are essentially legal compliance documents, not financial ones. And there is no duty to give guidance, let alone revised guidance, as we have learned from Google. Apple even says in its 8-K, So why would Apple do this? If we go look at Apple's 8-K report last quarter, they lead with the following statement: Why would Apple mention a press release in an SEC filing? The filing didn't say "Apple sold over nine million phones," it said "Apple announced it sold over nine million phones." Isn't that strange? It's almost as if the announcement is what mattered, not the sales numbers. Then they mention slightly revised guidance, which wasn't even outside of their initial guidance range. This is also weird. Why issue an SEC filing to guide within your previous guidance? Could it be that Apple's compliance lawyers suggested the 8-K to Oppenheimer because of the press release about the 9 million phones in 3 days, or perhaps, due to its inadvertent early release to someone? That is, maybe the lawyers counseled that somehow the the news in the release release created a situation where Apple had to officially report in an SEC filing under Regulation FD: This disclosure can serve as basically an insider trading get out of jail free card for accidental "tippers", if they file within 24 hours. Note that the 8-K was filed the *same day* as the press release. Regulation FD talks about methods of disclosure: In sum, I think this 8-K may have been CYA on Apple's part due to the iPhone numbers release, which they may have inadvertently released early to someone over the weekend, not some general policy to revise based on internal knowledge of good sales numbers. Conclusion, because Apple issued a one-time guidance revision, does not mean its policy is to announce guidance revisions. And perhaps the incident made Apple change its policy on releasing first weekend sales figures as well. And I think if Apple does report great iPhone numbers on Monday (and/or great CM sales the next earnings release), my hypothesis gains some credence. Or not.
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