Is it time to short Apple?

I posted something seven years ago suggesting the share price of Apple was a little ambitious.

At the time, Apple stock was trading at about fifty bucks. (post split $ )

Get out, I said!

You can make money shorting this, I said.

Apple closed over two hundred bucks today.


Sorry.


I sincerely hope nobody took my advice on that one.

However, I get a few right too. I recall pestering folks to buy oil futures back when it was twenty-five bucks a barrel. Then it went to what, $140 or something ridiculous?

Those few and far between people who listened to me made a killing. Unfortunately, I didn't.

I was in bankruptcy at the time. And I was too stupid to realize that you could have your left hand in bankruptcy and your right hand making a killing, simultaneously. That's a more important lesson than anything you're going to learn in business school.

My dear Tante Hilde used to have a little plaque in her kitchen; "We get too soon old and too late smart."


When I was thirty, I already knew that was true.

Today, I can taste and smell the truth of it.

Strategy Lab

I don't know about you, but I believe the "Strategy Lab" folks are on the verge of expanding the franchise.

Poverty Lab would be a good next step.

Maybe Suicide Lab could be marketed to the faithful shortly after that.

Chris Umiastowski had a Strategy Lab column in the Globe and Mail the other day in which he sorta fessed up about putting a buy recommend on Apple when it was at $700.

That's what he paid to add it to his portfolio. For Chris to be as unperturbed about that move as he claims to be I strongly suspect his portfolio is like mine.

Imaginary.

But Chris is over the moon about the prospects for Apple. If Apple was a "buy" at $700 then it is obviously a "buy lots and lots more at $430."

Had you heeded Chris' advice, you would be looking at a loss brushing up against 40% in less than a year.

Chris may not be perturbed but I'm guessing you might be.

By the way, Chris, if I were you I'd dump those Tesla shares while there's still somebody left on the buy side.

And I'd time that to happen before next winter...

Apple heading for $420; dump now

I don't know what the folks at the Mail Online have been smoking the four months since this blog concluded that Apple stock had no place to go but down, but here's a clue. Note third para in; "there are fears it could fall to $420."

It takes a sharp eye to spot these signals and decipher their meaning. That reference to 420 is a signal from the other side, from the great pot-head-in-chief Commander Jobs, that there is no hope without dope.

As for the lads at the Mail Online, I could hook you up with Dr. Kipling for some of his primo Puslinch Redhair, and you'll be up to speed in no time! Then you won't have to bear the ignomy of lagging months behind the pot-addled bloggers in your analyses.

Dump Apple

I'm looking at a chart that shows me the share price of Sony over the last twenty years or so.

Sony was a big deal back in the day. The brand had cachet. It was hip and cool or hot or sick or slick but whatever it was, Sony had it.

Sony was the must-have brand in consumer electronics.

They're not anymore.

Today Sony trades at about one tenth of where they were trading at the turn of the millennium. That brand cachet has completely evaporated. Well, not completely; they were ranked 87 in a recent survey of brand recognition. But they used to consistently place in the top ten.

Apple is certainly in the top ten today. Brand recognition like you wouldn't believe... just like Sony in the '90's! A share price ratcheted upwards by analysts totally unfamiliar with the laws of physics.

Or common sense.

Anybody getting into Apple at the 580 point is hopefully a day trader planning to get out at 580 and a half. That's doable.

Putting Apple in your long-term hold file isn't.

But if you've got the stomach and the wallet for a long term short, I think in ten years Apple might make you rich.

Apple well past best-before date

The signs are everywhere.

The lukewarm reviews for the iPhone 5.

The rioting workers at the assembly plants in China.

The maps fiasco.

This is a company that has peaked and has nowhere to go but down.

Imagining that an IT hardware supplier could become the most valuable corporation in the history of corporations was marginally plausible.

Imagining that it would remain that for more than a brief moment was not.

Go short.