How much changes in six months. Last September, everyone, including the hotdog vendor, the shoeshine boy and the kitchen sink, was screaming that AAPL $1000 is just around the corner, and cartoon analysts named for state capitals were coming up with idiotic price targets (hint: $1111) that only intellectually-stunted dyslexics could love. Six months later, the former growth company (and now levered-divdend value play) can barely break above $300. So, just to set the record straight, here, courtesy of marketsqueeze.com [4], is a small sample of the penguins who could barely outscream each other on the way to a "certain" $1 trillion market cap. Ooops.
- Andy Zaky [5]: “Apple will reach $1,000 in late December or early January 2014?; His Apple hedge fund – yes he only bought Apple shares for his fund - lost millions.
- James Altucher [6]: “Apple is definitely undervalued. It could easily find its way to $1,000.”
- Gene Munster [7]: “Now Munster is upping the ante, calling for Apple to reach $1,000 a share by 2014 and become the first U.S. company worth $1 trillion.”
- Steve Wozniak [8]: “People talk about $1000 stock price. At first you want to doubt it, but I actually believe that, and I don’t follow stock markets. Apple has that much growth left.”
- Jim Cramer [9]: “Thinking of Apple as a $1,000 stock is not “irrationally exuberant” as some have claimed, but likely a foregone conclusion.”
- Shebly Seyrafi of FBN Securities [10]: “AAPL continues to be a strong new product story,” the analyst writes. “It has the iPhone 5 shipping soon, it is expected to have a new iPad mini shipping in FY Q1, China Mobile is a large opportunity for AAPL starting next year and the iTV is generally expected to be launched over the next year or so
- Brian White of Topeka Capital [11]: “Driven by an ever expanding portfolio of innovative products, a growing integrated digital grid, unmatched aesthetics and a brand that is able to touch the soul of consumers of all backgrounds, Apple fever is spreading like a wildfire around the world and we see no end in sight to this trend.”
Sadly, and confirming that practically every so-called fiat pundit out there is nothing but a fancy suit-dressed momentum chaser (compare that to those who buy physical gold with conviction precisely when the price drops) it is now that the buy calls should be coming, not six months ago when the stock was at its all time highs.
But naturally, there is comfort only in clueless numbers, and as is well-known, the value added of finance "experts" when it comes to actually predicting the future, is at best zero.