

Apple Passes PetroChina to Become World's Second Largest Stock - petertkane
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/apple-passes-petrochina-to-become-world-s-second-largest-stock.html

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jfager
_“There’s no reason at all Apple can’t grow much, much bigger,” said Jane
Snorek, an analyst with Minneapolis-based First American Funds, which has more
than $100 billion under management, with Apple as its largest technology
holding._

Holy Conflict of Interest, Batman. This is the kind of crap that makes
financial 'journalism' so awful.

~~~
petertkane
They "updated" it since I first posted. I agree with how terrible financial
journalism can be, but sometimes it comes down to the writer having to pump
something out and this is the only person to actually call back. It's
unfortunate that that's OK with pubs and news orgs.

~~~
pavs
I don't think this is only unique to financial journalism but also common in
mainstream journalism/blogging.

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sendos
How can a company that makes gadgets be passing in market cap companies that
produce oil, which is a necessity for our modern way of life?

Sure, tech gadgets are great and super-useful when things are going well (and
I have lots of them, and quite a few from Apple) but when all is said and
done, oil powers our society. People need to drive to work no matter how bad
the economy gets. I would assume that tech gadgets are the first to go from
someone's wish list when the shit hits the fan.

So, even if a tech company has great revenue today, having the sort of P/E
ratio Apple has means that it is expected to have that sort of revenue (and
revenue growth) for the next couple of decades. While these sorts of P/E
ratios maybe make sense for large industrial companies that stick around for
half a century or more, do they make sense for tech companies?

1) Their products are usually in the nice-to-have or semi-luxury category, so
they don't have as much staying power through downturns*

2) Tech companies are usually outpaced by newer arrivals, so expecting their
run to last for decades is a bit optimistic.

* I will agree, however, that Apple has done well during the current downturn we are facing, but that's because it has produced some game-changing devices, like the iPhone, and how often can any company be able to produce game-changing devices?

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dbrannan
"How often can any company be able to produce game-changing devices?"

It seems Apple has a consistent track record for doing just that:

Intel / Bootcamp, Mac Mini, Newton, iLife, PowerBooks, The Macintosh GUI
(okay, Xerox had it first), iMacs, OSX (Unix for the masses), iPod (Shuffle,
Nano, iTouch, iPad, iPhone), iTunes store, Apple II, and so on....

You actually feel they have nothing left up their sleeve? With a record like
that I don't think I'd bet against them.

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joseakle
Trefis thinks the stock is worth 361 [1][3], market price is 288 [2], the
article says it reached 292, Trefis community average is at 410 [1].

There are 913.56M shares outstanding. Putting it's valuation at 263B. [2]

Which is around Microsoft+Adobe+Nokia or Intel+Google or IBM+HP

I´d short it if i knew how, i love mac, but this is just unsustainable.

Sources: [1]
[https://www.trefis.com/company?ovd_urlid=26389&hm=AAPL.t...](https://www.trefis.com/company?ovd_urlid=26389&hm=AAPL.trefis&hk=34d9a2442672ac24aeb993fb6efd3d47b4603e77#)
[2] <http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:AAPL> [3] All figures are US
Dollars except when specified.

~~~
lsc
sharebuilder will let you buy put options, which are probably a better idea
than a naked short for most people.

Personally, I agree that Apple is way overvalued... but it is tricky to time
these things. It could go up a lot before it comes down. I remember a quote
"The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent" - I
don't remember who said it, but it's good advice.

~~~
philwelch
Keynes said it: <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes>

The sentiment is quite similar to his other famous quote, "in the long run
we're all dead".

