"Peak Apple Apple's stock today inched toward the company's record high as investors eager for new products pushed shares over $100 apiece."
I don't understand, is that supposed to be The Register trolling itself? Apple reaching their peak AGAIN?
Apple's stock today inched toward the company's record high as investors eager for new products pushed shares over $100 apiece. It's the first time Apple stock price has hit triple figures since the company undertook an ambitious 7:1 stock split in June this year. Apple used the split to put more shares on the market and, in …
Exactly... The stocks are in demand from people who believe all the hype/rumour, that Apple are about to announce something new and wonderful, so up goes the price... And then it drops once the sales spin has been wiped off the press release, and someone notices the king has no clothes and the new phone is not really any different from the old one.
I don't really think the increase this time has to do with iPhone 6 hype, it is more of a rising tide that lifts all boats - the S&P has been going up a lot lately and is in uncharted record territory.
There may be a small post Sept. 9th letdown when Apple fails to announce an iWatch (if/when they intro it, I'll bet it is at a separate event) but not much of one compared to whatever the market as a whole is doing around that time.
Stock splits have nothing at all to do with the rate of growth of a share, their sole purpose is to put the share value at a level where smaller investors can afford to buy a minimum block. In theory a stock split or consolidation should have no impact at all on overall company value (although if you allow more small investors to purchase you may push up demand slightly and therefore slightly increase your overall market cap).
One thing that would help Apple's stock price from the split is if the stock is added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Previously Apple would not have been added because the Dow Jones doesn't weight prices so a high priced stock like Apple's would have too much influence over the value of the Dow. Post-split, it may be added at some future point when they decide they want to drop one of the current companies (perhaps due to reverse merger in the case of Pfizer) and need to look for a new one to add.
If a stock is added to the DJIA, its price will "automatically" go up because all funds or indexes that include the Dow 30 components will sell whatever stock is being removed and buy the stock being added. Most indexes use the S&P 500, but many funds still use the Dow as a component or offering. It wouldn't have a large impact, certainly less than a buck a share, but it does make a small difference.
The next few months ought to be great for Apple so an irresistible temptation for stock gamblers.
The iPhone 6 is a step forward - the long overdue increase in screen size makes this years launch far more interesting than last, although given how tolerant their customer base has been with the aging mini-screen format will be interesting to see what customer reaction is like as iPhone finally catches up with Android. Buying up so much 20nm wafer capacity so other manufacturers can't compete with the A8 SoC for a while should help for a few months too.
Apples achilles heel is continuing US carrier business subsidies of high Apple margins at the cost to carrier profitability but presumably volume contracts protect them years ahead so a while before the license to print money runs out.
All in all there's a good chance Apple will succeed in keeping smartphone market share above 10% through 2015 giving plenty of revenue and opportunities to build some new product lines before the premium phone business slips into decline.
I wouldn't be surprised to see large swings in stock price over the next 18 months, great for the gambling fraternity.
Yeah, I kind of wondering what this "much needed update" is as well. Even if they can double the compute and graphics performance over the current model there would be little for me to buy into.
Maybe if it was foldable down into a truly pocket sized device and had a battery life of 5 days of constant use then I might be interested.
Doubling the performance is (roughly) what they have done in previous upgrades and that pretty astonishing improvement is seen as just a tweak.
Aren't other tablet manufacturers in the same boat - the tablet paradigm is essentially polished now and you have to resort to gimmicks rather than innovation to have change for change's sake? The laptop paradigm stayed the same for a decade or more while hardware improved, until netbooks and ultrabooks tried to shake things up; even now the basic laptop looks like it did in 1994.