Apple

From a technical perspective, expect the stock to get clobbered by at least 8% in the first trading day after Jobs medical leave announcement, and could test $300 or below in the next few days. Looking ahead, there’s a good probability that Jobs may not come back...

AAPL Bid/Ask: EUR 233/249.85
Last EUR 239.5 down -20.7 (-7.96%)

And it was just yesterday that we ridiculed the Goldman brain trust for pushing everyone into the world's biggst hedge fund hotel, Apple, which is held by over 190 hedge funds. Don't look now but Nasdaq futures are about to get reacquainted with gravity.

Jobs also says that he will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company. As a reminder Apple accounts for about 20% of the Nasdaq. As a further reminder, the last time it was even rumored the COO was leaving, the stock tumbled $20 in the span of a few milliseconds. German listed Apple shares fall 1.8% following the news.

Some more trouble in Borg paradise? After Steve Jobs' health issues two years ago resulted in one of the biggest selloffs in Apple stock in recent history, is the trouble shifting to the CFO post, currently filled by Peter Oppenheimer? Bloomberg reports: "Apple Inc. approached Blackstone Group LP Chief Financial Officer Laurence Tosi to become its finance chief, three people with knowledge of the matter said." But why? "Steve Dowling, a spokesman for Apple, said the company is “not conducting a CFO search.” Current CFO Peter Oppenheimer “loves the company and is extremely happy in his role,” Dowling said." So someone is not telling the whole story. And that is something Apple fans certainly do not like.

Perusing the latest hedge fund trend monitor from Goldman Sachs, we find that the world's biggest groupthink stock and hedge fund hotel, Apple has just been upgraded from 5 stars to 6 stars. Compared to our last update, when we uncovered that a whopping 181 funds were long the name, this number has subsequently risen even more, and most recently 190 hedge funds (not including mutual funds) were long the name. Should the company, which is priced beyond perfection, have some unpleasant news to report ever in its future, just hedge funds will need at least 2 straight days to liquidate their holdings in the name.

Reggie Middleton vs Goldman Sachs' marketing department for investment banking, brokerage and trading (otherwise known as their sell side analysts), round 4. Who has been the most accurate in the past?

It appears as if I wrinkled a few feathers of the birds that are doing God’s work with my missive “Goldman’s $430 Target, Screaming Buy On Apple At Its All Time High Is In Direct Contravention To Reggie Middleton’s Logic – Who’s Right? Well, Who Has Been More Right In The Past?“. This is a good thing! A little creative destruction and anarchy is positive for the complacent masses. I say we take this up a notch, pull down our pants and see who is truly the most intellectually endowed...

It's Reggie Middleton vs Goldman again. This time on Apple. Who has the better track record? Let's delve into the logic of an Apple buy and realize who is making the recommendation and why...

One needs look no further than the recent update of the Goldman conviction list (Americas) to get a sense of how Goldman is positioning its clients: with 53 Buys, and just 1 Sell, the list is the most skewed it has ever been. That said, we are confident that going long Lockheed (the only Sell on the list) will outperform a basket of all the longs that Goldman is pitching, among which most notably Apple, which in a last ditch attempt to retain the momentum was added to the Conviction Buy list late last night, which is the most definitive factor that the stock has now topped.

"Sovereign Man" Simon Black's daily musing comes today from the Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand where he contemplates the present and future of a civilization in which the biggest company in the world (soon enough) will be one that creates a la carte fads and focuses on one-time mindless gratification. "We live in rather interesting times, though; the technology sector’s
engineering brilliance goes where demand and financial incentives are
the greatest… and for now, that seems to be designing devices that can
mimic flatulence or geolocate the nearest pizzeria. This will change eventually as the problems worsen and society’s
priorities shift… but for now, I think that Apple’s soaring profits and
society’s evangelical devotion to its products may be a social
reflection of the final days of Rome." If Apple is a sign of the end of empire, we would be even more curious with Simon's take on Netflix' symbology (which continues trading at such ludicrous forward multiples that excel goes straight to the BSOD when any modeling is attempted).

Thought we'd make an evergreen on zero hedge out of this discussion about the future of content with my composer brother Michael Whalen that we published today in The IRA. Happy, safe and prosperous New Year to all. Oh, and to my friends in Japan: "Tora! Tora!,Tora!"

Steve Wozniack, Apple's cofounder, was actually quite accurate in his rather stark admission that Android will overcome Apple in the mobile phone market just as Windows overcame Apple. Lest anyone forget, Bill Gates and crew nearly put Apple out of business due to margin compression and the commoditization of Apple's high end - and eventually overpriced products. Android is doing the same, simply on a very compressed time horizon.

While reading 13D.com's latest newsletter (one of the best, but Kiril you have a mistake in point 1 w/r/t QE2 - the POMO 17-30 schedule is not 9%, it is 4%), we stumbled across this terrific excerpt from "Memoirs of David Rockefeller", which highlights the exploits of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., the man who out of nothing went on to create the world's biggest and most important company in the history of the world - Standard Oil, and in doing so effectively created the US corporation in its modern form, as well as defining the concept of the monopoly. That he is also the patriarch of the Rockefeller legacy, which has since shaped the face of modern capitalism, is secondary. It is no surprise that during his time, he was viewed in diametrical opposites by the general public - he was either loved or hated, pretty much like all men of relevance. While we will ignore any ethical claims, what we find most fascinating from the below excerpt, is the purported approach which Rockefeller took when creating the Standard Oil monopoly, one which was premised upon "elastic demand" or the same razor-razorblade model of vertical integration that is exhibited best by none other than the company which comes closest to an Std Oil type of monopoly-presence: Apple (and just so there is no confusion, we refer of course to the distributed content, commission-based revenue stream model). Which leads us to a few tangential thoughts, chief among them - is Apple planting the seeds of its own destruction courtesy of its unmitigated success? The 1911 decision to break up the Standard Oil monopoly was as much driven out of economic principles, as one of populist retaliation. It is no wonder that Apple is now the second largest company in the US by market cap... just behind Standard Oil offspring Exxon.

There is a reason why groupthink is often the most dangerous concept in the financial industry. When it works: it makes everybody richer. When it fails, it results in the premature end of many asset managers. Nowhere is this better seen today than in the top holders of Apple stock, which according to CapIQ, is held by 1,933 institutions that have at least one share holding in the name, and 402, which have at least 100,000 shares. Cross-referencing the top 100 holders of AAPL stock with the top 100 holders of a recent tech casualty, Cisco, shows that the of the top 100 Apple holders (one of them being Steve Jobs), 93 are also present in Cisco. And a result of the past two-days' drubbing in these two names, these massively cross-correlated top holders in the two stocks have seen over $18 billion worth of P&L losses in the past two days alone. Now many will respond that these firms have also experienced massive profits on the upside, which of course would be correct. However, what many will also conveniently ignore, is that these very firms will all too often leverage unrealized profits and use these as margin to purchase additional stocks, in essence re-creating a new cost basis with every single remargining of the stock. Therefore, should there be a sell of in Cisco, or heaven forbid, Apple, it will pull the rug from the entire market. It also explains why mysterious buying will often materialize: the last thing the market can afford is a massive domino-style sell off due to the plunge in one single name. So far today, Apple dodged the bullet. Cisco still has not. At some point these mutual and hedge funds, however, will receive margin calls to fund over $18 billion in cash collateral, especially since mutual free fund cash is currently at all time lows just over 3%. When that happens, not even Brian Sack will save the market.

On Apple and Heebner cleaning house, whether he did it for liquidity reasons or not, the writing is on the Wall for Apple and the days of no competition high margin iPhone sales are over. Android is in town and has already taken over the lead. Add to that the fact that the equity markets are rather iffy to begin with, people are still heavily indebted and Apple caters to those who pay premiums, and the Apple sale was a no-brainer. Of course, I explained this in detail a month ago, but I guess it took time for the filings to come to light.