by Option Review - October 8th, 2014 4:05 pm
Shares in Apple (Ticker: AAPL) are near their highs of the session in the final hour of trading on Wednesday, adding to the muted gains seen earlier in the day, following the release of the September FOMC meeting minutes and after activist investor and Apple shareholder Carl Icahn tweeted, “Tmrw we’ll be sending an open letter to @tim_cook. Believe it will be interesting.” Icahn’s tweet hit the ether at 2:33 pm ET and was met with a spike in volume in Apple shares. The stock is currently up 2.0% on the day at $100.75 as of 3:15 pm ET.
Chart – Apple rally accelerates after Icahn tweet
Tags: AAPL, Apple, Apple Inc., Icahn
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by ilene - February 16th, 2011 11:09 pm
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
iConomics is a word I’ve created to capture the state of doing business in a world that Apple ($AAPL) owns and the rest of us just live in.
Regular readers know that I am a fairly astute observer of market trends and themes. While lots of ink has been spilled about Apple’s ascendancy, no one has really yet formulated a good list of takeaways from it all. Below are what I view to be the key lessons for companies in the Era of Apple…
1. Don’t just invent the product, invent the market:
Nobody knew they needed an in-home Keurig machine to make cup after cup of coffee until Green Mountain Coffee ($GMCR) convinced them that they did. In much the same way, Microsoft had tried and failed repeatedly to kickstart a market for tablet computers over the last decade. Each failure was blamed on there being no market for the devices. Funny, Apple’s iPad came into the world with a similar lack of a market for tablets – so it had to invent one.
2. Pick needy partners:
Jamie Dimon awoke to his destiny in early 2008 as one of the few remaining pillars of strength in the financial world. While all the other bank CEOs were running around trying to do deals with each other, Dimon’s JPMorgan ($JPM) was busy partering with the government. He and his resources were needed so badly that he was handed Bear Stearns almost for free – a price he voluntarily raised it on his own because it was such an embarrassingly good deal. As the government got even more needy, it handed its new partner Washington Mutual while simultaneously eating all the bad debt – too good to be true. In much the same way, Apple launched its iPhone with the neediest of partners – the combining Cingular/AT&T ($T) colossus that, above all, needed a hit phone to overcome their patchwork coverage network. Apple was handed a monumental opportunity to have its untested hardware pushed to millions of new customers.
3. Consumer tastes are overrated:
Steve Jobs isn’t one of those guys who test-markets stuff to death. Rather than try to innovate by committee, he relies on his own taste and the prowess of his designers and engineers. And it works. He is delivering functionality like music-playing, web-accessing…
Tags: Apple Inc., consumers, iconomics, market, products
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by ilene - September 26th, 2009 9:17 am
Apple Inc., a love-hate story
Courtesy of Cassandra Does Tokyo
"How do I love thee? – Let me count the ways…" Thy ways in CY2009 alone include: iMac G5 24", iPhone 3GS 16gb, iPhone 3GS 32gb, iTouch 16gb, iTouch 32gb, and a MacBook Pro 13" 250gb. I won’t tell you the damage, but you can do the math. This is in addition to our existing iMacs, and iPods of virtually all vintage since inception. And I consider myself a Luddite (of sorts)! My ardour was enhanced with the discovery that I can tether my iPhones to any machine (via bluetooth no less!) to share its 3G connection to the web, which while not helping me conjure posts during the past month, did enable the family to overcome the abominable work (or lack thereof) of the
terrassier on our external connections to the world.
But no relationship is perfect (at least in my experiences). And so I discovered when, upon arrival, I plugged in my c2004 iMac G5 20" PowerPC, depressed the on-button, which was immediately followed by a thunderous BANG! as if rapper Dolla was capped in my new home office. This was followed by the pungence of melting electronics or burnishing solder, an undesirable aroma in the vicinity of any computer – especially one’s own. WTFFFF??!?!? Pirsig would term this a "gumption trap", and it took some deep breaths to keep my demeanor centered upon puzzlement rather than its more visceral outlet: rage.
Back into its box. Into the car. And a same-day drop-off (it weas Friday) to the regional authorized Apple Service center where my machine had received a scheduled appointment, Monday at 200pm, which was a welcome change from the flunky banana republicanism prevailing in my old locale. At precisely 2:05pm on Monday, iPhone rings, and service center confirms it’s the Power Supply ("alimentation" en francais) …yes, please order one…Wed?…yes that’s fine….Merci, Au revoir. Wow, these guys have their act together. Wed arrives. Service center phones. Ummm Houston we’ve a problem. Power supply installed but it won’t boot? The logic board is fried too?? About Euro700 for new power supply, logic board, and labour? Thanks, leave it for now.
But it was what the technician said next that fascinated me. He said my machine strangely had a 110v-only power
…
Tags: AAPL, Apple Inc., customer service
Posted in Phil's Favorites | 1 Comment »
"How do I love thee? – Let me count the ways…" Thy ways in CY2009 alone include: iMac G5 24", iPhone 3GS 16gb, iPhone 3GS 32gb, iTouch 16gb, iTouch 32gb, and a MacBook Pro 13" 250gb. I won’t tell you the damage, but you can do the math. This is in addition to our existing iMacs, and iPods of virtually all vintage since inception. And I consider myself a Luddite (of sorts)! My ardour was enhanced with the discovery that I can tether my iPhones to any machine (via bluetooth no less!) to share its 3G connection to the web, which while not helping me conjure posts during the past month, did enable the family to overcome the abominable work (or lack thereof) of the terrassier on our external connections to the world.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.