A place for Apple traders and investors to share their best ideas.
To get things rolling (and lacking anything better from my usual subjects), here’s Louis Rossmann — a Tim-Cook-merch-selling YouTuber — discovering this guy named John Gruber and being persuaded that his (Rossmann’s) first take on Apple’s child safety initiative had been wrong. If you didn’t read Gruber’s post all the way to the end, Rossmann will do it for you.
Below: Apple vs. the S&P 500 last week, normalized…
Disclosure: Although I am now an Apple shareholder (see Why I bought a share of Apple, my first), I am in no position to give trading advice. Don’t blame me if you drain your IRA doing something you read about here.
See also last week’s trading strategies.
On a micro level, timing the market has never been my forte. But on a macro level, I seem to hold my own. We need to sell some AAPL every year, but we’re getting better at timing that.
We’re retired, and keep our house mortgaged. Purposefully. Our house here in Sacramento has increased in value, but nothing like our AAPL!
‘Nuff said.
Who knew?
Integrity is such a breath of fresh air in today’s connected world.
If you follow Apple, you should also be following Gruber.
The improvement in success has come from adopting a Pete Rose “singles vs home runs” mentality. The change has resulted in a much high overall ROI. Who knew?
The trend is your friend until it isn’t any longer. My historical (10 years of data) trend chart indicates that AAPL has 3 weeks left in its current run, soooo….
I’m going to trade tomorrow as I have for the last 10 weeks, waiting until I believe I have seen Monday’s intraday low, then acquiring AUG Call Spreads with a high Strike below that low.
To help me identify Monday’s intraday low I have developed a little program that uses Friday’s Close to calculate Monday’s low. When AAPL’s volatility is low (like it is presently) that calculation has been quite accurate.
Because I believe all forecasters should be held accountable for their utterances, I’m posting what that intraday calculation indicates as Monday’s low – $146.17. My strategy says buy the AUG 13 $145/$146 Call Spread. Risk management says buy the AUG 13 $144/$145 Call Spread. With an intraday low below $146.50 I’ll be buying the AUG 13 $144/$145. Above $146.50 I’ll have to make a gut value decision, lower ROI or greater risk. My recent successes has come from taking the lower ROI path.
Money is cheap to borrow now, if not free of interest entirely. If one can carry the monthly financed note without economic stress, then do so is my advice to friends & relatives.
One can make more money using his/her liquid assets to purchase more shares of Apple or keeping the shares for continuing investment instead of cashing them to pay off a note. Paying on a financed note builds higher levels of available credit and increases credit scores leading to easier borrowed money in the future at the lowest levels percentage rates. One saves little in paying off a financed note compared with all the positive benefits derived of carrying that note. It’s all about building premium credit and higher credit scores leading to ready access to money when you may need to borrow in the future; and getting the best possible loan rate when doing so. This is particularly true today with more companies financing their products at zero percent rate, such as Apple.
Everyone is different and I respect that difference. So I don’t judge when someone ignores my advice. From a practical pecuniary tribute, though, carrying debt responsibly is the chosen path, if that path presents no fiscal (or emotional) problems. Even Apple chooses this path when it holds a seemingly insurmountable cash reserves it could tap easily.
Your example of doing the same thing by investing in Apple stock makes total sense. Apple is doing that right now and not only making a great financial decision, but also that’s the only way possible for them to get to their goal (if ever) of becoming cash neutral.
With the FCF they have been producing, and will in all likelihood continue generating, this is another way to innovate that nobody in the WS or analyst community seems to understand. Perhaps a few do, but they portray it incorrectly and poorly in a negative article.
At the end of that 3 year period, AAPL had more than doubled in value.
You MIGHT earn on your borrowing, but you WILL pay for it.
How well this interplay fares out is just a matter of time.