Apple Stock

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Trading stock is not wise. Investing in stocks for the long term is very wise.

That means buying good companies at discounted prices or great companies at fair prices. All one needs to do is find good companies which WallStreet hates and thus are cheap on a relative basis. The key here is to be patient and give the street time to see the error of their ways.

Right now I'm sitting on the largest cash position I've ever held. With the market at all time highs I'm happy to wait for a correction or bear market. I am buying certain gold miners right now near their 52 week lows. I'm happy to wait a few years to earn 100 percent return on my money.

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Still own Apple stock. I would like to exit my position around $700. I would have doubled my money at that point so maybe the stock will hit $700 at the end of this year or next.

I doubt it hits $700 again. It certainly won't happen before the 7-to-1 split. The stock has major resistance coming up at $610-615 and then even more at $630, where I think it will peak again. Let's not forget that this is a company that hasn't truly innovated since the loss of Steve Jobs.

Apple's growth days are over. It has turned into a value stock, and one that doesn't even pay a worthwhile dividend at that. I wouldn't tie up my capital in the stock. There are a number of other companies with much greater growth potential trading at relatively cheap future P/E ratios.
 
One should try to maximize return for every particle of risk one takes. Buying individual stocks is not the most efficient way to capture the equity risk premium. Passive, low cost strategies are the most efficient way to do this. Single company risk is historically not rewarded.

That is not necessarily true and has been proven to not necessarily be true by Graham. Stock prices ebb and flow over time for even the best of companies. Identifying companies that have a decades long history of consistently improving profits and consistently increasing dividends is not difficult. It's finding the time when their price is low enough to make a purchase worthwhile and finding a time when they become too overvalued to get out.

For the average person that can't or won't have the patience, they should stick to simple low cost index funds and call it a day. For those willing to do the research and willing to be patient over decades, they can do a little better for even less risk than an index fund.
 
That is not necessarily true and has been proven to not necessarily be true by Graham. Stock prices ebb and flow over time for even the best of companies. Identifying companies that have a decades long history of consistently improving profits and consistently increasing dividends is not difficult. It's finding the time when their price is low enough to make a purchase worthwhile and finding a time when they become too overvalued to get out.

For the average person that can't or won't have the patience, they should stick to simple low cost index funds and call it a day. For those willing to do the research and willing to be patient over decades, they can do a little better for even less risk than an index fund.

Using individual stocks for the US Large Cap segment of one's portfolio is a reasonable strategy, but the resources, patience, work, and discipline are beyond most individual investors. Myself included. Given multiple passive strategies available at less than ten basis points per year, the efficiency of this asset class, It is just not worth the time.
 
For the average person that can't or won't have the patience, they should stick to simple low cost index funds and call it a day. For those willing to do the research and willing to be patient over decades, they can do a little better for even less risk than an index fund.

If that's true, then why can't a majority of professional fund managers beat index funds? Their full-time job is to do that research and they have access to resources individuals don't. What's their excuse?
 
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If that's true, then why can't a majority of professional fund managers beat index funds? Their full-time job is to do that research and they have access to resources individuals don't. What's their excuse?

Many, many reasons. One is that they are chasing short term returns. A strategy that loses out for 5 years gets them fired even if it would've paid off big over 30 years.

A smart, patient approach to buying companies that have and will likely be profitable for decades can provide similar returns to the overall S&P 500 but at a lower risk as they don't have the downside risk of the market as a whole. Funds try to beat the S&P. The goal isn't to beat it, the goal is to match it but with less risk during bear markets.

Anybody trying to beat an upgoing market is just being greedy and likely taking too much risk. But you can get the same return on the upside with some less risk on the downside.
 
Using individual stocks for the US Large Cap segment of one's portfolio is a reasonable strategy, but the resources, patience, work, and discipline are beyond most individual investors. Myself included. Given multiple passive strategies available at less than ten basis points per year, the efficiency of this asset class, It is just not worth the time.

I'd agree those things are beyond most investors, but most investors can't and don't think long term. They care how their portfolio has done the last quarter or YTD or past 12 months. People are not logical and rational and buying a stock when everybody else says to sell it is hard to do. Similarly taking some profits when everybody is raving about a stock that is skyrocketing is hard to do.

But for people who care to be smart, value driven investors, it really doesn't take much time or effort to create a reasonable "basket" of large profitable companies that can temporarily be had for a discount price. Stock prices get thrown around by news headlines and fortune telling. You get a story like Target having credit card numbers stolen and it can hammer their stock price in the short term despite nothing fundamentally changing about the business or BP having to reach settlements after their Gulf oil spill. Nothing about the company funamentally changes but the stock price can drop 20-40% in a short time. But guess what? They come back. BP has nearly doubled since their low in 2010 and Target will continue to sell a ton of crap.

If anybody asked me for advice in person, I'd tell them to be smart and buy cheap index funds. But that doesn't mean that you can't take less risk than an index fund and create the same or better return. It just requires a lot of discipline.
 
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Apple split 7:1 so now where does the stock go? I see the stock trading down to as low as $85 this summer but breaking $110 after the iphone6 hits the market in the Fall. I'm thinking that $120 is a good exit point post split. Perhaps, I should jut take $110?

Opinions?
 
Apple split 7:1 so now where does the stock go? I see the stock trading down to as low as $85 this summer but breaking $110 after the iphone6 hits the market in the Fall. I'm thinking that $120 is a good exit point post split. Perhaps, I should jut take $110?

Opinions?

The idea behind stock splits are to make them more affordable for the lamen day trader. IMO, it's a good time to buy. People that weren't previously able to afford the $640 price tag per share will flock to it now. Granted, it's going to give us minimal upturns, but it'll happen in a larger volume. Stock market is driven completely off of speculation...the stock price split is just another facet which drives speculation by making the stock seemingly more affordable. Which is good news for those that already own it- it can only go up in the long run!
 
I don't see any reason to sell apple. It is a growth stock at this point. Undiversified large cap fund PGG.... ;)

Buy and hold. Apple isn't going anywhere.
 
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Using individual stocks for the US Large Cap segment of one's portfolio is a reasonable strategy, but the resources, patience, work, and discipline are beyond most individual investors. Myself included. Given multiple passive strategies available at less than ten basis points per year, the efficiency of this asset class, It is just not worth the time.


Doze, I'm a convert with some backsliding. Cut me some slack. I'm looking to unload the shares not buy more of them. That said, Apple looks like a $110-$120 stock by December. The iPhone 6 will be big
 
Doze, I'm a convert with some backsliding. Cut me some slack. I'm looking to unload the shares not buy more of them. That said, Apple looks like a $110-$120 stock by December. The iPhone 6 will be big


I haven't sold any of my Apple Shares yet. What is a good exit point for the stock? Cramer from CNBC says never as his view is that Apple is a long term hold.
Should I sell half at $150?
 
I haven't sold any of my Apple Shares yet. What is a good exit point for the stock? Cramer from CNBC says never as his view is that Apple is a long term hold.
Should I sell half at $150?

Well don't listen to Cramer. He's correct less than a coin flip of the time. I'd continue to watch their earnings and see how it plays out. They certainly continue to rake in the cash. With the upcoming release of the Watch it figures they will see another little bump in sales. That said if it starts to get overvalued it'd probably be a reasonable time to back off your position.

Me personally? I figure they will continue to ramp up their dividend and do some stock buy backs all while increasing profits. I don't make short term predictions, but it's hard to see how 5 or 10 years down the road you wouldn't do well by just holding what you have now.
 
apple-watch-6_1.jpg
 
Apple Watch Could Push Company Worth to $1 Trillion: Report



Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty said Apple shares could be worth $160 a year from now. They were worth $126 a share on Friday. That would put the company's value at $934 billion, wrote Arthur, approaching his $1 trillion prediction
 
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Why doesn't Apple offer New movie releases via streaming from its Apple TV? Imagine an Apple Movie App on the Apple TV which charges you $1.99 to watch the latest movie available from RedBox or NetFlix DVD service.

NetFlix carries a ridiculous valuation/PE ratio and Apple Stock would like double from here if the company offered a new release streaming service.
 
I haven't sold any of my Apple Shares yet. What is a good exit point for the stock? Cramer from CNBC says never as his view is that Apple is a long term hold.
Should I sell half at $150?

No idea. If they are a significant portion of your net worth I'd sell now. If they are part of your play money I'd sell covered calls repeatedly until they are called away.
 
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Recent writings that I agree with


"It is madness to risk losing what you need in pursuing what you simply desire."

Warren Buffet

http://www.etf.com/sections/features-and-news/bill-bernstein-rule-no-1-stick-your-plan-0?nopaging=1

another brief interview with Bill Bernstein


Doze,

I rebalanced my Portfolio in late November/Decmeber to include at least 7% in emerging Markets; I invest in that sector via ETFs (EEMV and VWO) along with several mutual funds in my 401K (no load, 4 and 5 star funds with positive returns).

BERNSTEIN:

Well, yes—in general, I think emerging markets should be part of everybody’s portfolio. I think they’re quite reasonably priced—they may be the cheapest part of anybody’s equity portfolio right now.
 
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Doze,

Bernstein is all over the place with is advice/predictions. On on hand he says real return will be in the 2% range going forward but on the other he says we are in a raging Bull market with the USA being a better place to invest than Emerging Markets:


Bernstein: We've been secular bulls for five years now on the U.S. market. Our argument was that we could be in one of the biggest bull markets of our careers. That's still our underlying theme. I'm about the worst person to talk to with respect to short-term volatility and what's the market going to do this month or even this quarter. But the secular story behind the bull market in the United States is still quite good.

Although there may be some cyclical issues, the secular backdrop in emerging markets is actually much, much worse than people think. As a firm, we've been amazed at how poor the profit dynamics are in the emerging markets, yet people refuse to give up on these parts of the world. They still think these are the best places to go for growth in the world, despite the fact that profits data has been arguing for quite some time that that's not true.

There are some cyclical things that are going on in the emerging markets, and as a firm, we're trying to play that off and on. But the secular backdrop to emerging markets we think is really quite poor.
 
Apple:


The company pays a quarterly dividend of $0.47 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.71%. While this yield doesn't beat Philip Morris' 4% yield, Apple is growing its dividend twice as fast as the tobacco stock today. In fact, Apple grew its dividend at an annualized growth rate of 11.2% during the past two years
 
Doze,

Bernstein is all over the place with is advice/predictions. On on hand he says real return will be in the 2% range going forward but on the other he says we are in a raging Bull market with the USA being a better place to invest than Emerging Markets:


Bernstein: We've been secular bulls for five years now on the U.S. market. Our argument was that we could be in one of the biggest bull markets of our careers. That's still our underlying theme. I'm about the worst person to talk to with respect to short-term volatility and what's the market going to do this month or even this quarter. But the secular story behind the bull market in the United States is still quite good.

Although there may be some cyclical issues, the secular backdrop in emerging markets is actually much, much worse than people think. As a firm, we've been amazed at how poor the profit dynamics are in the emerging markets, yet people refuse to give up on these parts of the world. They still think these are the best places to go for growth in the world, despite the fact that profits data has been arguing for quite some time that that's not true.

There are some cyclical things that are going on in the emerging markets, and as a firm, we're trying to play that off and on. But the secular backdrop to emerging markets we think is really quite poor.


Different Bernstein.
 
Apple:


The company pays a quarterly dividend of $0.47 per share and has a dividend yield of 1.71%. While this yield doesn't beat Philip Morris' 4% yield, Apple is growing its dividend twice as fast as the tobacco stock today. In fact, Apple grew its dividend at an annualized growth rate of 11.2% during the past two years

It's a little unfair to compare the rate of increase in dividend with one company that just started paying a dividend 2 years ago and another that has been paying out for decades. While I agree Apple has enough cash around it hopefully continue to increase the dividend, they are also in an industry that is more cash intense going forward for R&D and it's possible they are also more likely to have to cut their dividend than Altria would be. Then again that ignores long term trends in smoking in the US.

Both are great companies and I own 'em both!
 
Necrobumping intentionally to avoid non-clinical thread proliferation.

Anyone buying this AAPL dip? I'm wondering how much further the shorts will take this one.
 
Necrobumping intentionally to avoid non-clinical thread proliferation.

Anyone buying this AAPL dip? I'm wondering how much further the shorts will take this one.

I'm not sure how much you can call something like 7% off an all time high price a "dip". It's been hovering in roughly the same range for the last 5 months. As a company Apple continues to print money, continues to increase their dividend, and will likely institute more share buybacks. It's a great company that is well run and is likely a safe investment.

But while I like the company and own enough of their stock, I'm not exactly buying any extra at the moment. I think it's more fairly priced than cheaply priced.
 
I find these old investing threads to be priceless for retrospection. Since the early 2013 part of this thread, Gold is down about 40% and Apple stock has nearly doubled. There are a bunch of others. Another great recommendation from that time frame in another thread was platinum as being really cheap. It's down like 50% since then.
 
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I find these old investing threads to be priceless for retrospection. Since the early 2013 part of this thread, Gold is down about 40% and Apple stock has nearly doubled. There are a bunch of others. Another great recommendation from that time frame in another thread was platinum as being really cheap. It's down like 50% since then.

I still own my Apple stock. I"ll likely sell half once it breaks $128 per share next year.

Second, International stocks have rebounded nicely and Emerging markets look good from a value perspective.

Third, Gold went up considerably this year giving you plenty of time to sell (if you are a trader). Gold then went back down. Fair value for an ounce of gold is around $1200-$1250 per ounce (I've posted that many times). I still have 5% of my assets in Gold/Silver but this is a very volatile area especially silver.

Fourth, it can take 10-15 years for full cycles to play out. As Doze has pointed out being diversified is still a great approach to long term investing (if not the best) so that's the one solid piece of advice for new grads.

With rising rates and inflation highly likely this year (2017) Bond funds look riskier than ever; but, they have had a 20+ year tear of out-performance with less risk than any other asset class.

Is this the year for a Biotech/healthcare rebound? or, will Trump cause this sector to crater even more than it did in 2016? I took the approach of a small rebound and added to the sector via ETFs.
 
I still own my Apple stock. I"ll likely sell half once it breaks $128 per share next year.

Second, International stocks have rebounded nicely and Emerging markets look good from a value perspective.

Third, Gold went up considerably this year giving you plenty of time to sell (if you are a trader). Gold then went back down. Fair value for an ounce of gold is around $1200-$1250 per ounce (I've posted that many times). I still have 5% of my assets in Gold/Silver but this is a very volatile area especially silver.

Fourth, it can take 10-15 years for full cycles to play out. As Doze has pointed out being diversified is still a great approach to long term investing (if not the best) so that's the one solid piece of advice for new grads.

With rising rates and inflation highly likely this year (2017) Bond funds look riskier than ever; but, they have had a 20+ year tear of out-performance with less risk than any other asset class.

Is this the year for a Biotech/healthcare rebound? or, will Trump cause this sector to crater even more than it did in 2016? I took the approach of a small rebound and added to the sector via ETFs.
I'm with you on Biotech...at least that's how I cry myself to sleep thinking of GILD's rise and fall. Will hold til GILD and biotech rebounds...or maybe it never will.
 
I still own my Apple stock. I"ll likely sell half once it breaks $128 per share next year.

Second, International stocks have rebounded nicely and Emerging markets look good from a value perspective.

Third, Gold went up considerably this year giving you plenty of time to sell (if you are a trader). Gold then went back down. Fair value for an ounce of gold is around $1200-$1250 per ounce (I've posted that many times). I still have 5% of my assets in Gold/Silver but this is a very volatile area especially silver.

Fourth, it can take 10-15 years for full cycles to play out. As Doze has pointed out being diversified is still a great approach to long term investing (if not the best) so that's the one solid piece of advice for new grads.

With rising rates and inflation highly likely this year (2017) Bond funds look riskier than ever; but, they have had a 20+ year tear of out-performance with less risk than any other asset class.

Is this the year for a Biotech/healthcare rebound? or, will Trump cause this sector to crater even more than it did in 2016? I took the approach of a small rebound and added to the sector via ETFs.


Sell or hang on for a ride?
 
Why doesn't Apple offer New movie releases via streaming from its Apple TV? Imagine an Apple Movie App on the Apple TV which charges you $1.99 to watch the latest movie available from RedBox or NetFlix DVD service.

NetFlix carries a ridiculous valuation/PE ratio and Apple Stock would like double from here if the company offered a new release streaming service.

Just announced they will.

"In terms of original content, we have put our toe in the water doing some original content for Apple Music, and that will be rolling out through the year. We are learning from that, and we'll go from there. The way that we participate in the changes that are going on in the media industry — that I fully expect to accelerate from the cable bundle beginning to break down — is:

1. We started the new Apple TV a year ago, we're pleased on how that platform has come along. We have more things planned for it, but it's come a long way in a year, and it gives us a clear platform to build off of.

2. Embedded in the 150 million paid subscriptions that I mentioned in my opening comments, there's a number of third-party services that are a part of that, where we participate economically in some of that by offering our platform selling and distributing.

3. With our toe in the water we are learning a lot about the original content business, and thinking about ways that we could play in that."
 
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Sell or hang on for a ride?

The iphone 8 release will be a big seller for Apple. After the iphone 8 Apple badly needs another revenue stream to grow its business. I'm tempted to sell stock later this year when the rumors of "record breaking sales" of the iphone 8 start coming out. Apple needs to become a media company and not just a hardware company or it will go the way of Wang Computers or Nokia.
 
The iphone 8 release will be a big seller for Apple. After the iphone 8 Apple badly needs another revenue stream to grow its business. I'm tempted to sell stock later this year when the rumors of "record breaking sales" of the iphone 8 start coming out. Apple needs to become a media company and not just a hardware company or it will go the way of Wang Computers or Nokia.

To be fair, Apple's hardware seems to have a much better chance of remaining relevant than something like Nokia.

Your point would seem to be that they need to grow out services/media to continue to grow revenues at a higher rate. That is true. But just hardware alone will continue to print money for them.
 
To be fair, Apple's hardware seems to have a much better chance of remaining relevant than something like Nokia.

Your point would seem to be that they need to grow out services/media to continue to grow revenues at a higher rate. That is true. But just hardware alone will continue to print money for them.

The "market" will put a PE of about 8-9 on a hardware company vs a PE of 18-20 for a media company. If Apple can get into media like Netflix the stock doubles.
 
The "market" will put a PE of about 8-9 on a hardware company vs a PE of 18-20 for a media company. If Apple can get into media like Netflix the stock doubles.

If you want to talk about AAPL's PE ratio, the big question is how you value their nearly $250B in cash and securities on hand. Their market cap is close to $650B. For example, if you chopped 20% tax off that cash on hand to get back to US and be able to be distributed, you'd have a company with $200B in cash and $450B in value for the rest of it and AAPL's PE ratio would be 1 for the cash and 10 for the company, instead of 15 that it sits currently (since you don't separate out the cash for traditional PE calculations).

Then again nobody really knows what will happen with US tax code during the next 4 years and how that will affect companies with offshore cash.
 
Right now I'm sitting on the largest cash position I've ever held. With the market at all time highs I'm happy to wait for a correction or bear market. I am buying certain gold miners right now near their 52 week lows. I'm happy to wait a few years to earn 100 percent return on my money.

So how did this work out for you?
 
The problem with Apple as a hardware company is that they are abandoning what used to be their core market - pro level graphics, animation, video, photo etc. They haven't updated their high level computers in so long that they are rapidly losing market share back to PC's which continue to offer better and better performance on a platform that is now just as easy to use as a Mac.
 
So how did this work out for you?

I invested in Gold miners, Foreign Equity ETFs and Mutual funds plus Emerging Markets. While I missed some of the run up in U.S. equities those other areas were good investments. I still need to invest more cash but I'm not concerned with my 50/50 split right now.
 
And in AAPL news, the stock is back above $132 today and brushing up against it's all time high from May 2015 and way up off it's low of $90 in May 2016.
 
I bought FB in the ipo at 38. It dropped to 24 and I've been buying all the way up to 92. It is now at 132. I'm betting it will be a solid stock for many years. Instagram is popular and so is Whatsapp. Both owned by FB.


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I bought FB in the ipo at 38. It dropped to 24 and I've been buying all the way up to 92. It is now at 132. I'm betting it will be a solid stock for many years. Instagram is popular and so is Whatsapp. Both owned by FB.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I'm a convert to ETFs; Doze has shown me the error of my ways.
 
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