From CNBC's "Stock futures slightly negative Wednesday morning" posted early Wednesday:
Stock futures were just under the flatline Wednesday morning...
In regular trading the Dow fell more than 350 points, or 1.03%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite lost 1.4% and 2%, respectively.
The moves came as investors lost hope that the Federal Reserve will be able to engineer a soft landing. Instead, concerns swirled around the state of the economy and whether an economic downturn is approaching.
“Investors couldn’t decide which they were more worried about: an impending recession, as implied by November declines for the ISM, Chicago PMI and Philly Fed, as well as housing data, or the threat of a more hawkish-leaning FOMC, as a result of stronger than expected employment data and factory orders,” said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research. “Stocks sold off across the board, as investors decided to take the profits generated by the last two monthly price gains, the first since August 2021.”
Investors await more economic data this week for clues on what to expect from the Fed. On Wednesday, the Mortgage Bankers Association will release its weekly report of mortgage loan applications.
Charts: Yahoo!Finance sees a bullish MACD pattern. Max pain moves up $1 to $147 with a call mountain at $150 (down $5) and a put peak at $135.
But very little has actually changed with Apple. Yes, there’s some slowing in China’s ability to produce the most desired iPhones going into the all-important holiday season, but those sales will just be pushed into the following quarter, because the desire for the best isn’t going to just vanish on Christmas Day, but will be replaced with a little card that says something really special is coming.
So all the FUD is just fake news, and the negative impact on AAPL just creates a better bargain for long term investors looking to further feather their Apple nests. Oh, and for Apple itself, which is spinning all that silver cash flow into golden buybacks.
To me, that would imply other segments to be flat to slightly higher. I would think iPads flat, Macs flat to slightly higher despite no new products, iPhones down $3-6B, Wearables up 5-12%, and Services up 3% exceeding $20B for the first time. All of this despite about 700-800 basis points of Foreign exchange headwinds.
My hope is that all analysts revise their total revenue numbers down to account for an iPhone shortfall, making any expectations more realistic. Apple and AAPL doesn’t need unrealistic expectations to be compared with as if nothing untoward had happened.