Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

[Mega]

Bloomberg sez the I Phone has bombed!
Mega

[Moe_Gamble]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Tet recommended selling Apple. He said the I Phone would bomb.

[friendly_jacek]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Tet recommended selling Apple. He said the I Phone would bomb.

He was right, OK, but said that when AAPL was near $110.
Now it's close to $140. Timing is everything, as always.

[Tet]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

He was right, OK, but said that when AAPL was near $110.
Now it's close to $140. Timing is everything, as always.

I said this at about $125 and said it should go up another 10%, which is about now, I didn't short it so timing is everything anyway. I bought some dog called Motorolla instead.

Here's the thread
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1415

Here's what I said about shorting
Sorry I don't believe I said sell either, but I would have my finger on the trigger. Wouldn't shock me to see Apple gain another 10% here for the very short term. Mania is a hard chart to read, those getting out are going to drive this stock higher for a while until it becomes clear there's not many chairs left the next time the music stops. Stock already hit another 52-week high today, Apple's got seven consecutive weekly gains, one of those gains for 10%. I wouldn't be shocked to see this stock selling at $135, MarketWatch is hyping Apple today and it's holding up pretty well for such a down day. This should be a fun one to watch.

Now hoping all the Apple masses figure out since Apple isnt' the next best thing, maybe they'll want MOT to
be the next best thing, it certainly is a bargain, even more of a bargain then when I bought it.

[lb]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I live in the ~ 4th largest city in the US, and I still haven't seen a single JesusPhone. However, at least APPL is selling it's phone for a profit, something that MOT doesn't seem to understand.

BTW - Nice call on GM as well, I expect it to be sub 32 in two weeks.

[metalman]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I live in the ~ 4th largest city in the US, and I still haven't seen a single JesusPhone. However, at least APPL is selling it's phone for a profit, something that MOT doesn't seem to understand.

BTW - Nice call on GM as well, I expect it to be sub 32 in two weeks.

i'm gonna wait to buy gm stock until just before the fed buys gm bonds. good plan, don't you think?

[Tet]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I live in the ~ 4th largest city in the US, and I still haven't seen a single JesusPhone. However, at least APPL is selling it's phone for a profit, something that MOT doesn't seem to understand.

BTW - Nice call on GM as well, I expect it to be sub 32 in two weeks.

I think before I'd short Apple here, I'd wait for a 100 million volume day and since that didnt' happen, I think Apples earnings are good news and they get a bit of a short covering bounce tomorrow. Maybe the blow-off for Apple is $150 to $160 before it heads lower.

Apparently I don't seem to understand MOT either, but I'm going to hold this bag for a while longer. Thanks for the GM mention, that was a pretty classic transfere of the bag as the insiders got out at higher prices.

[DemonD]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I will stand by what I said in my previous post - shorting a company that is overvalued by only 40% is not a good idea. Maybe AAPL is now overvalued by 60-80%. Shorting high-growth companies that have beat consensus estimates quarter after quarter is very, very dangerous. On the other hand, shorting companies with poor fundamentals in industries that are crashing hard *cough cough HOMEBUILDERS cough cough SUBPRIME/ALT-A LENDERS cough cough*, and shorting them on any dead cat bounce, now that is a better short candidate.

Tet, I'm not sure what you saw in MOT. I go by fundamentals. Motorola seems like it's in a sort of malaise, not really going downhill but no real strength of sales and profits. I know it's hard if you compare MOT to NOK (nokia, big competitor), and you see Nokia's shares climbing way above Motorola's, so you might think value. But if the value of decreased price is not backed up by a fundamental strength in the core business, it shouldn't matter.



Incidentally I don't really see opportunity it either going long or short on any stocks mentioned, nor do I have a position in any of the above stocks. I still would not short AAPL. And also, for any naysayers, the iphone is pretty nifty. A friend of mine has one and I recently got to play with it. It definitely has an "it" and a "wow" factor that currently Nintendo has with it's Wii gaming system.

I would also say to Mega, Bloomberg did not say "The iphone has bombed!" They reported that AT&T said that 146,000 iphones were activated in the quarter. That quarter would be the end of the 2nd quarter, which was exactly 2 days long for the iphone (came out on the 29th of June).

here is the article http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=aThQtTOyB79A

Incidentally, I recommend to all of you thinking of investing one way or another in AAPL to go TRY THE IPHONE. Try it. Use it. I am no Apple fan, but I can objectively decide on a piece of technology, and the iphone is something you cannot judge unless you've used it.

[c1ue]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I've played with an iPhone - its crap if you're not a tech-moron.

Admittedly a significant part of it is AT&T: both the service in my area and the EDGE speed.

Lots of good ideas on a pretty phone, but ultimately

1) it does not give a better cell experience

2) does not allow downloading of iTunes 'over the air', ridiculous

3) built in battery and glass face - I drop my phone fairly regularly; the Nokias I had in the past would basically explode after the 2nd or 3rd time. The Sanyo I have now takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.

4) slow IP speeds = crap video viewing and email checking. Even on my present 3G phone it is somewhat painful to read email via the various mobile email portals. Having a 3 inch screen vs. normal 2 inch screen makes zero difference for attachments, for contract reading, for Excel spreadsheet reading etc etc

However, the main point is not the iPhone's technical merits/demerits.

Even if Apple hits 1M units, it is not likely that it would have a major impact on tomorrow's numbers - and that is what will drive the ongoing rocket ship or not.

I'm not pretending to know - but I do know that there will be a certain amount of oscillation in either direction, thus I put in a Jan 2008, 200 call / Jan 2008, 125 put position. I'm clearly leaning down, but actually see some opportunity to even hit both ends of target profit.

As I've said before, Apple is not a technology company, they're a fashion company.

I am adding that they are not a fashion company even necessarily for the riche or fashionable, but a fashion company for the digital artists of which there are an amazing number. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Art_University for an overview of a nearly ubiquitous institution all over San Francisco

[Tet]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

I think before I'd short Apple here, I'd wait for a 100 million volume day and since that didnt' happen, I think Apples earnings are good news and they get a bit of a short covering bounce tomorrow. Maybe the blow-off for Apple is $150 to $160 before it heads lower.

Apple up 9% after hours on good earnings.

[Tet]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Tet, I'm not sure what you saw in MOT. I go by fundamentals. Motorola seems like it's in a sort of malaise, not really going downhill but no real strength of sales and profits. I know it's hard if you compare MOT to NOK (nokia, big competitor), and you see Nokia's shares climbing way above Motorola's, so you might think value. But if the value of decreased price is not backed up by a fundamental strength in the core business, it shouldn't matter.

I'm sure MOT will be a question I'll ask myself and hopefully learn from, entering early is something I do seem to like to do. I was underwater on GM, Qualcomm and Dell for about a monthor more after I bought each of them as well . For some reason I thought they were done kicking the living crap out of this POS stock and apparently there's still somebody they want to hurt, I doubt that somebody is me though. Upside potential is what I'm looking for and at the time MOT looked like they had it and they still do. I normally seem to enter these things about one or two months too soon so I'm going to still see how this plays out, it really hasn't cost me much to hold this hand yet, for the most part I'm right where I bought it and not in any big hurry. Upside potential of about 35% to 40% is still there.

Apple is a fun one to watch and it is going to be the single biggest short on the NASDAQ this year, I'm sure of that. Catching that is still going to be a problem because Apple is in the hands of the Big Boyz. Nice wipsaw action today, pure beauty to behold.

[DemonD]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Why you would have been a moron to short Apple stock, and still would be a moron if you would short it now:

"There was initially some disappointment in the 270,000 iPhone units, but as people realized the gross margins came in at 37 percent, they were very encouraged by the profitability of the company," said Caris & Co. analyst Shebly Seyrafi. "Clearly, Apple is a growth story."

Gross margins 37% on every ipod. Split between the 4gb and 8gb, you get a profit of about $200 per iphone sold. Now, for guidance...

In a statement, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said the company expects to sell 1 million iPhones by the end of its fiscal fourth quarter. The company is also sticking by its previous target of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008, the first full year for which the iPhone will be on sale.

1 million iphones x 200 = $200,000,000 PROFIT for fiscal year 2007.
10 million iphones x 200 = $2,000,000,000.

That's $2 Billion. Now, will they drop the price a bit? sure, but then the manufacturing costs will go down commensurately. The only way the iphone misses these targets is
1. A competitor comes up with something better.
2. Apple doesn't upgrade to 3G by mid 2008.
and
3. Severe economic downturn/recession.

Clue, I understand your reservations, but most people nowadays using cell phones are not technophiles. They are, for example, the teenage daughters of my supervisor who tells me her daughter is pleading and begging for one. There are hundreds of millions of ipods out there, there are over a hundred million PS2's out there, there are over 10 million Nintendo DS's out there. The iphone's biggest drawback, from what I understand, is the text message function on the on-screen keypad, but the rest of the phone is so freakin cool people won't end their love affair with apple. It's not meant to be a shock and awe inspiring piece of technology, it's meant to be simple and easy to use to be a phone, video, and music player, and yes there is some internet on there.

But look at the profit potential. I will reiterate to go long or short on apple is beyond my risk tolerance, but so far my warnings have rung true. I said not to short apple at 110, not to short it at 135, and I think you'd be just as foolish to short it at 150. An earnings miss would make a short a big winner, but another earnings blockbuster would send it over 200/share. I don't trust the micro or macro factors enough to consider myself prescient enough to make that prediction.

I do, however, know when to STAY THE HELL AWAY from a train that is coming at you at 200 mph.

again best of luck to all.

[Tet]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Why you would have been a moron to short Apple stock, and still would be a moron if you would short it now:

Not sure what you meant by this, you could have made a lot of money shorting this piece of shit in the last month.

Gross margins 37% on every ipod. Split between the 4gb and 8gb, you get a profit of about $200 per iphone sold. Now, for guidance...

That's a pretty shitty margin and when you add the advertising expense that makes it no margin at all.

1 million iphones x 200 = $200,000,000 PROFIT for fiscal year 2007.
10 million iphones x 200 = $2,000,000,000.

LMAO

That's $2 Billion. Now, will they drop the price a bit? sure, but then the manufacturing costs will go down commensurately. The only way the iphone misses these targets is
1. A competitor comes up with something better.
2. Apple doesn't upgrade to 3G by mid 2008.
and
3. Severe economic downturn/recession.

Clue, I understand your reservations, but most people nowadays using cell phones are not technophiles. They are, for example, the teenage daughters of my supervisor who tells me her daughter is pleading and begging for one. There are hundreds of millions of ipods out there, there are over a hundred million PS2's out there, there are over 10 million Nintendo DS's out there. The iphone's biggest drawback, from what I understand, is the text message function on the on-screen keypad, but the rest of the phone is so freakin cool people won't end their love affair with apple. It's not meant to be a shock and awe inspiring piece of technology, it's meant to be simple and easy to use to be a phone, video, and music player, and yes there is some internet on there.

But look at the profit potential. I will reiterate to go long or short on apple is beyond my risk tolerance, but so far my warnings have rung true. I said not to short apple at 110, not to short it at 135, and I think you'd be just as foolish to short it at 150. An earnings miss would make a short a big winner, but another earnings blockbuster would send it over 200/share. I don't trust the micro or macro factors enough to consider myself prescient enough to make that prediction.

I do, however, know when to STAY THE HELL AWAY from a train that is coming at you at 200 mph.

again best of luck to all.

The phone sucks, if you're impressed by it I've got cans tied to strings that you should look at. This pig is a pig, it looks like a pig, it stinks like a pig and it is going down just like a pig, way down. Look at the volume not the price, when the volume spikes on this pig then the price drops like a rock. My teenage sons say the phone sucks, but they do love those I-Pods. Look at some Japanese cell phones if you think high tech phones are the way to go, all of them make this I-bomb look like last weeks meatloaf. Just pointing out that no matter what the hype is on this phone here in the USA fantasyland, every other country already has better cell phones.

[DemonD]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Shorting on a super short term trade you might have made a few bucks. If you had shorted right before earnings, you would have lost your shorts (pun intended). For the super technical traders, I wish you luck with that.

Ipods themselves are pretty crappy. The thing is they are easy to use, and they break all the time as well as get lost and stolen (due to small size) so you need to keep buying them. I have no idea how the costs break down on the margins, but 37% is a pretty healthy freakin return.

I will say you put another post in about how Apple is really a marketing company. I would tend to agree that marketing is their biggest strength.

Incidentally my friend who has an ipod has his own video editing company and does contracting work for mid- to major studio projects and uses macs all day long for video editing, and he loves his iphone. So your son says it sucks, my friend says it's cool, the point is that we are here talking about iphones and not the blackberry pearl.

The point is betting against a technological wave like this is just not a good idea. I have no idea if the first ipods that came out were any good, but I don't remember them being anything all that special beyond the initial size of the memory. I don't see too many people carrying around 15gig ipods nowadays though, do you?

So figure, in 4 years, there will be no more 8 gig iphones. They will be 60-120 or maybe even 200 or 500 gig iphones. Apple has shown a propensity for integrating higher amounts of storage in small, user-friendly products. Until someone shows that they can compete with that, I just don't see where the competition comes from, and I don't see any reason why iphones couldn't be a repeat of the ipod.

There is STILL NO COMPETING product the offers more than 60 gigs for an mp3 player. None. Zip. Nada. Ipod's 80gig ipod has no competition. The Zune? pfffffffft. iriver? creative's zen? It has a 60gig version which no one else besides apple has... or should i say had... THREE YEARS ago. Where is sony's ipod killer? And you can talk all you want about the advanced phones in Korea and Japan, from what I understand it is not the phones themselves but the systems, connection technology, and wireless plans that are advanced. Emailing and text messaging (SMS) is much cheaper outside of north america without the stupid 160 character restriction. Here is a list of the 10 most popular asian phones, you won't find one with even 1 gig of memory on them (which even my phone has): http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6454_7-1009643-1.html

and here is a good overall review of japanese phones. again, my relatively simple phone LG CU-500 does everything the advanced japanese phones do, but I'm limited by coverage and systems. It's not the phones but the plans and service that are the problems in the US.
http://www.geckobeach.com/cellular/articles/japan.php

edit: and oh yes as far as i can find, beyond samsung inventing an 8 gig micro SD card, I'm not seeing any other phone in the world coming with 8 gig hard drives.

I hope my reasonings have been made clear. Short Apple at your own peril.

best of luck.

[c1ue]

Re: Who said not o buy Apple? (You were RIGHT!)

Incidentally my friend who has an ipod has his own video editing company and does contracting work for mid- to major studio projects and uses macs all day long for video editing, and he loves his iphone.

DD,

Note that this is exactly what I said both in a previous post and in the bottom of my previous post in this thread: Apple is not a technology company, they are a fashion company for the digital artist set - which is significantly synonymous with the Mac set.

Thus betting against Apple is not a technology short, it is a fashion short (s)

Note that of the 4 issues I pointed out, 3 are not important to most of Apple's core audience - for the iPhone or otherwise.

However, the last item: battery and screen face - this issue won't become apparent for several months on average.

Why does this matter? Because a 30Gb Ipod = $224.90 (from Google paid search link), while an iPhone costs $500 + 2 year contract.

This is not peanuts - especially if either the iPhone requires significant maintenance/replacement and/or if the iPhone experiences significant returns due to poor longevity.

Also note that any cell phone has fundamentally more exposure to damage than an iPod.

iPods sit in your pocket or specially designed holder, cell phones must be out more. Not necessarily for talk - although how do you dial without taking it out - due to bluetooth, but using it for the Internet or email is impossible without it vulnerable.

Lastly how could you be seen with your fancy new iPhone if you just use the bluetooth headset?:rolleyes:

Either way, note I did a straddle, not a short.

Medium term being January 2008, I believe the market overall is going to eat it, but Apple as usual will beat their numbers in the meantime.

This to me means volatility hence my options play.