I beg to differ, but am open to correction. I think the Four Horsemen were: INTC, DELL, CSCO, MSFT. INTC built the chips, DELL assembled, MSFT was OS, and CSCO connected them all.

Go to Stockcharts and type in "AAPL:$NDX". You will see that the ratio between apple and the nasdaq 100 has increased by more than 50x the last 10 years! And 3x the last 3 years.

Is there any way to create or view a chart of the NDX without aapl?

And what about PCLN? That turd is even more confusing than AAPL. The AARP folks have pumped that stock into the clouds, and they are a totally worthless company. There are half a dozen companies that do the same thing, and none of them even get good deals any more. I got a better rate from Holiday Inn's own website than from any of those stupid travel deal sites.

Luckypenny: Different bubble, different horsemen. INTC and friends were 2000. GOOG and friends were the "new" horsemen for 2007/2008

buuut the pension/retirement funds and university endowments need AAPL to go up,

question is do the TBTF banks, or are they hedged.

edit had posted in wrong place

I do see a stock bubble. That yes. It's *huge*. At large, across the board. It can blow up tomorrow or in a week or next year or whenever. That, I do see.

I also see that all smartphone manufacturers get subsidies from phone carriers. Apple gets away with a larger bite. Why? Because for every consumer that comes in explicitly asking for a Samsung phone, many more reportedly come in asking for an iPhone. Carriers might not like it, but consumers at large are telling them to bend over. They do. They say ouch. They complain. [Boohoo. Crocodile tear.]

It's not just phone sales and carrier subsidies, either. Mac sales are rising while PC sales are flat or dropping (reportedly, if you strip out Mac sales). A couple of Android tablets get carrier subsidies, yet the iPad is still outselling all other tablets combined.

It's tough to deny that Apple has a lot of momentum. When **** hits the fan, it can reduce its prices, as they have done for the ipod over the years, and still make a comfortable profit. I'm not aware of Samsung, Nokia, RIM, HP, Dell and others being in a situation this rosy.

Anyway, yes, there is a stock market bubble. It has been screaming to pop since April 2009. Yes, Apple will go down. Perhaps even more than others, since it's a hedge fund favorite and the latter might get caught in waves of fire sale. I'd wager Apple will probably surf through the tidal wave uninjured, however; its competitors, probably not.

Point is: you're doing a public service by reminding investors that Apple might hit $100 long before it hits $1,000. But I suspect you'd do an even bigger public service by reminding, in these same posts, that an equally bleak outlook holds for every other stock that relies on consumers having disposable income.

PS -- a datapoint to look forward to, should they release it:

In France, Free Mobile offers a no-lock-in, €19.99/month outsized plan -- 3gb of data and unlimited evening calls to 50+ countries, if memory serves. Customers can opt to *buy* an iPhone, or any other phone. (Free refuses to take any credit risk by subsidizing phones.) Customers can, at their option, sign up for financing with Sodexo, a consumer credit business, at a whopping APR over 24 or 36 months.

(I don't know about you, as an aside, but I'd show a lot more compassion for phone carriers if they all did this. As things stand, with customer locking and so on, they deserve to eat nauseating ****.)

Now, Free Mobile launched earlier this year. They've yet to publish phone sale numbers, and I doubt they will before the end of the summer. When they do, I wouldn't be too surprised if iPhones (all generations) account for a large chunk of phone sales. If they don't, I'll happily concede to you that carrier subsidies are the key driver of iPhone sales.

My livelyhood is based on Apple's Objective-C and NextStep/Cocoa. I'm pretty much dependent on Apple to provide the platform that my desktop software is designed for. I do have a fallback with the GNUStep/Cocoa equivalent that runs on various Unix platforms.

I would not care to concentrate my personal risk by speculating in Apple stock, either as a long or a short.

Well we did not QUITE get an outside reversal on Apple, but we got damn close.

Quote:

My livelyhood is based on Apple's Objective-C and NextStep/Cocoa.

I hear Qt is quite the viable option. I've been toying with it lately for OSx/Win7/Android. If only there was some iOS support for it.

Luckypenny is right on the original '4 horsemen.' That was back before most of us had web access. Then, the market had the horsemen Gen notes before the 2008/9 meltdown. However, the new 2012 horsemen ride with sacks of burritos and ipad/iphone while booking flight reservations...and they wear under-armour (or lululemon for the ladies) so they get no chaffing.


someone posted -
"It seems to me that, shares-wise, AAPL is a pyramid schema.
- you don't get any dividends
- nobody is going to buy it to take over AAPL (at current price, who could do it, even if anybody would want to?)
- so, the only way or reason why you would buy AAPL is to sell it to someone else for an even bigger price.
- that person (the next buyer) also is not going to have any material advantages from the shares he buys; he can only sell it to the next buyer for a hopefully even bigger price.
- yes, Apple as a company makes a lot of money. But AAPL holders aren't seeing any of it."

DUDE. come on. you need to think b4 posting. Insert nearly any stock ticker for appl in your missive and it holds true. Also, I think some would dispute your claim of appl holders not seeing any money.

Is it fair to say that trying to convince someone to sell AAPL is about as difficult as getting someone to sell gold?

Disclosure: I've been a coin collector since I was seven, just sold about a quarter of my physical gold position, but don't own AAPL.

"I have an iPad 1 too, definitely can't handle the software upgrades from Apple well nor most of the newer apps. However, for consuming content"

Funny, since the iPad is considered a mobile device and a lot of protected content on the internet isn't licensed for mobile devices so you can't view it. Where as a person with a netbook can.

Nobody is calling Apple a zero or saying they make bad products.

The current version of Mac OS X runs on Macs which were introduced over four-and-a-half years ago, and I'm running it just fine on one of the iMacs introduced during this period.

The largest single shareholder I can find for AAPL is about 5%; I'm not aware of any individual or organization which owns 51% of AAPL. Moreover, Apple's executive team doesn't get their large bonuses in cash, but in RSUs which vest over years, requiring them to stay with the company. The greater the stock appreciation, the more those executives make. Isn't that the way it should be?

Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, doesn't even make $2M a year. I'll bet you can find many CEOs whose base salary is much higher.

If you keep claiming AAPL is going to crash, eventually you'll probably be right. In the meantime, you've missed many opportunities to sell at $300, $400, $500, or $600 more.

TA doesn't work in a stealth bull market. A couple of guys and some hamster wheels just executed a 1 BILLION dollar sale. This is not hooking up some DNS servers like 99 KD. The market is always right.

A lot of my buddies, including ones that trade heavily, are touting AAPL will surely go to 1000 in the next year or two. They have made money on it all the way up. Yes, I've played it a few times, but rarely for more than a day or swing trade, because I share the sentiment posted here. But I really feel this time with all the calls for 1000, that the end is near.

We don't live in the Granma state.

Driving the Ferrari F355

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FTECNjTp....

"I once thought fool.com a respectable place to go get investing advice. Not so much anymore."

Not ever if you ask me, they were the biggest dumbest cheerleaders out there during the dot.con boom.

Quote:

TA doesn't work in a stealth bull market. A couple of guys and some hamster wheels just executed a 1 BILLION dollar sale. This is not hooking up some DNS servers like 99 KD. The market is always right.

but hooking up DNS servers is worth more than adding code to pictures to make it look like kodacrome. the market is right as you say, because it's showing a massive bubble right in ones face. back in 2000 when it was the first four horsemen, they all needed to be taken down a peg - they were bull****ing all over the market. in 2008 the new four horsemen all needed to revauliate their mobile market issues. now the market feels apple is too big for its britches and they need to make that money go somewhere. 1000 a share is highway robbery. It isnt even worth what it is now when we have more diverse companies stock price are 100X less and produce more in the mainstream.

video "Driving the Ferrari F355"

crap. now I really covet my neighbors goods.

Somehow I doubt Enzo would approve of her driving shoes.

I've always found when trading Apple long, that if one is ever afraid of holding long over night.... that it's fairly liquid, can sell @market before the close. :)

so what will be the straw that begins the down trend...earning next week and guidance of lower earnings...strikes in China...bad press on chinese slave labor?

thanks in advance