Recent Comments

  • Bill Donahue on Seeking Alpha: Apple gets an F - 'And keep in mind that this “report” is AI-generated. Meaning it’s simply a rehash of everything that’s in reports and articles on Apple in the last year, most likely weighted according to its prevalence in the media. Which is just what everyone is looking for in their financial “analyses”: a rear-view focus on opinions that were likely wrong, uninformed, and certainly not forward-looking.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Both Apple and Google to enter smart glasses market in 2026 - 'Most excellent Bill.'
  • Gregg Thurman on CSLA hikes its Apple target price $65 (!) to $330 - 'Had to go out and find Tim’s conference call statement. “We expect total company revenue to grow by 10 to 12% year over year we expect iPhone revenue to grow double digits year over year, and we expect that that would make the December quarter the best ever in the history of the company,” CEO Tim Cook.'
  • Bill Donahue on Both Apple and Google to enter smart glasses market in 2026 - 'I still don’t believe the AI glasses form factor will ever be a popular or disruptive one, especially if all having to wear glasses gets you is live physical directions or translation – both of which are already available with smartphones that are already in peoples’ pockets or hands. Anyone who thinks having translation captions flashing infront of your eyes while you’re trying to find out something in a foreign language is going to work in real life is deluded. Especially when you consider that AirPods now can deliver in-ear live translation.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Both Apple and Google to enter smart glasses market in 2026 - 'Users will be able to take photos using the camera Super creepy. I sense major pushback coming on that feature.'
  • Bill Donahue on Wall Street thinks Apple's AI strategy looks smart — for now - 'Once again, someone confusing a refusal to rush to follow the crowd in spending vast amounts of capex on LLM scaling to chase hyped up AI capabilities as evidence of a lack of strategy. At the recent NeurIPS, the major AI science conference last week, there was substantial discussion – including by researchers at Google, OpenAI, Amazon and people like the University of Alberta’s reinforcement learning guru, Richard Sutton – about how hyperscaling is not going to deliver AGI and the major breakthroughs that people like Sam Altman have been promising are inevitable – if only companies spend trillions of dollars on scaling. Sutton in his keynote (and others) emphasized that LLMs don’t and won’t scale because they require and rely on more available data to make LLM output more accurately reflect what is known and don’t result in AI that can generalize to broad topics, or tackle problems they haven’t already encountered. Which seems pretty obvious, given that LLMs really are interpolative models rather than extrapolative (without even considering their inability to distinguish between crap and gold in training datasets). I’d argue that Apple has among the best strategies – one built on facilitating discrete functional uses of AI by the consumer and commercial masses that provides personal data security and *actually works* for what the user wants to do – and that the ones who lack any coherent AI strategy include anyone else who’s running blindly after LLM hyperscaling, especially when none of them has any comprehensible financial return that justifies the capex.'
  • Gregg Thurman on CSLA hikes its Apple target price $65 (!) to $330 - 'Elsewhere, iPhone sales are surging to new highs, driving a 3–5% increase to FY26–27CL revenue and earnings.” Obviously Ahmed didn’t get the memo, Apple guided revenue growth for the December quarter between 10% and 12%. So goes December, so goes the rest of the fiscal year, or doesn’t he track that?'
  • Gregg Thurman on Wall Street thinks Apple's AI strategy looks smart — for now - 'Apple was the second-worst performer among the Magnificent Seven tech giants, as its shares tumbled 18% through the end of June. Tariffs, stupid, tariffs. AAPL fell off a cliff in April, almost coinciding exactly with Trump’s worldwide imposition of tariffs against everybody. In June, facing heavy pushback from our trading partners Trump began pulling back those tariffs and issuing carve outs (most notably for Apple). Apple’s/AAPL’s decline had nothing to do with its fundamentals, which have proven resilient in the turmoil caused by those tariffs.'
  • Roger Schutte on Wall Street thinks Apple's AI strategy looks smart — for now - 'Neal, from what I’ve read the Hyperscales funded their AI investments with cash flows for the past few years. However of late they are doing most of it via bond debt offerings.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Premarket: Apple was red, turned green - 'The sample size is kinda small, but AAPL seems to be trending between $276 and $279. This would be consistent with historic trend.'
  • Neal Guttenberg on Wall Street thinks Apple's AI strategy looks smart — for now - 'According to the article linked to on Laura Martin, Apple needs a GenAI strategy. From today’s article, it sounds like Apple already has one, it is just one that, it sounds like, Laura Martin disagrees with. I don’t follow the other companies closely but how are they funding their CAPEX for AI? Is it out of free cash flow? If it is, then they would be significantly more profitable without this spending but may have wasted a ton of money if the large markets for AI products doesn’t pay off(since they may already be commoditized when they are ready for launch).'
  • David Baraff on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Yes, Bullish Cross was AZ (“he who must not be named”). In fact there are a number of people here who joined this group to have a place for discussions after BC went away. Anyway, it didn’t sour me, just made me more cautious. And like I said, I never lost money again after that — it’s simply that not doing options would have yielded more $$ than doing options. YMMV.'
  • David Emery on CSLA hikes its Apple target price $65 (!) to $330 - 'IF they picked $265 a year ago, that would have been a pretty good guess.'
  • Roger Schutte on Wall Street thinks Apple's AI strategy looks smart — for now - 'Laura Martin is a senior analyst who ‘…publishes research on the largest internet and media stocks in the US.’ John Barr actually manages clients money as ‘…Co-Portfolio Manager of the Needham Growth Fund and Portfolio Manager of the Needham Aggressive Growth Fund.’ Who would you trust more? * quotes from their bio pages at Needham Funds'
  • Robert Paul Leitao on Premarket: Apple was red, turned green - 'Today’s the day! Today’s the day we receive the FOMC’s interest rate decision! It’s also the day Oracle and Adobe release results. It might also be the day several of the nation’s biggest banks (and maybe a bunch of regional banks, too!) have to explain their 2026 spending plans after what JPM said yesterday! In the meantime, index futures are dancing on the breakeven line. Apple is up pre-market $0.49 at $277.67. JPMorgan Chase is ahead $0.85 at $301.36 after dropping $14.70 or 4.66% on spending news on Tuesday.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Bullish Cross, wasn’t that Andy Zaky’s investment blog? If you lost due to his advice you were not alone. He got sued for millions, then disappeared. I can’t blame you for being sour on options after that experience.'
  • David Baraff on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'No, all decisions were made on my own. I’ve never, ever used a broker. (I wouldn’t bother, unless they were better at it than I am, and if they were, why would they bother to be working as a broker?) My only real loss was from buying vertical call spreads, back in the days of Bullish Cross, in 2012-2014. A play where time ran out before the stock recovered. But putting that aside, the only trading since then (i.e. from 2012) has been selling occasional AAPL covered calls. And I can say that though I certainly made money on that (because you literally *cannot* lose money selling a covered call), I made *less* money than if I’d never entered into it at all, because AAPL was always going up, up, up, and there’ve been times when the stock has been called away. I’m not saying people can’t make money with options: I’m just here to say your odds of doing it are way lower than you think they are. Someone out there may prove me wrong. Most won’t. Common stock may be boring, but it’s awful forgiving when things go sideways, compared with options. Basically, I’ve held AAPL since 2005, never ever selling, so my return is pretty much astronomical. It’s just that occasional options forays have cut it down by a smidge, not really enough for me to notice, but enough for me to get up on my high horse and issue the warning: “There be dragons here.”'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'David, I’m guessing your broker guided your Options decision. Getting burnt in that scenario is understandable. Your broker earns peanuts recommending options. His real earnings comes from commissions on buying/selling equities. That’s where his loyalties exist. It wasn’t options that created the bad taste in your mouth, it was your broker whose interests weren’t aligned with yours. Until you are able to make your own learned decisions, I would recommend that you not trade options. Fee based brokers aren’t going to guide you without their own self interest interfering with their objectivity.'
  • David Baraff on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Options trading is, flat out, dangerous. It’s extremely difficult to ever get right. The real problem is that with stocks, pretty much any decision you make doesn’t have time pressure. Bought some AAPL and hoping to sell it, but it’s lower than when you bought it? That’s OK, just wait. As long as you need to. The problem with options is you not only have to get the direction right, you have to get the timing right. There are too many “black swan” events out there that’ll destroy you. Yes, you can succeed at options. You just probably won’t. (For all the money I’ve ever made with the simplest, most basic strategy, which is selling covered calls which is the first thing they’ll ever recommend you do, it turns out that if I had simply done *nothing*, I would have made a lot *more money. Said differently, even with the most basic of options strategies, I made less money with this strategy than I would have just sitting on my hands.) Every choice you make with regard to stocks (buy a stock? Sell it? Do nothing? Buy an option? Sell it? Don’t do it at all) is a choice on a continuum of infinitely many decisions you must make. *Not* buying AAPL, yesterday, was a choice you made. Or didn’t. All I’m saying is that in my experience, most any choices you will make with options will be… …. worse than the choices that don’t involve options. Take it from someone who has been investing in AAPL since 2005. I’ve made a ton of money on AAPL. Just not with AAPL options.'
  • Rick Povich on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Thanks Greg. Options trading has always mystified me, but I ultimately wanted to try – and not lose a bunch of money. The step-by-step process is what I needed but just couldn’t grasp without some hand-holding. Your example above seems to be a good one'
  • Stephen Gordon on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Check out Tastytrade too.'
  • Fred Stein on Citi hikes its Apple price target $15 to $315 - 'Good catch. Just a guess, he may refer to a launch of an iPhone 18e, successor the 16e. Apple updates their ‘budget’ phones at a slower cadence and in the spring. It makes economic sense to launch budget phones after the surge of a new launch when manufacturing and component costs decline.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'I don’t have the ambition that PED has. I will limit my “tutorials” to answering questions. Most times the answers will be rather detailed (I’m assuming the questioner’s knowledge is limited). Don’t let your lack of knowledge stop you from asking a question. I’ve found that there is always someone smarter, and someone always less knowledgeable than I. Together we can improve all of our understandings. We just have to ask (without fear).'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'All brokerages have an education section. Refer to that. Caution: I think of myself as a reasonably intelligent person. Brokerage primers are written by and for the knowledgeable. I don’t recommend them. My education began with a recommendation by a friend. That trade was successful and I was hooked. From then on (post January 2005) I did a postmortem on all of my trades. Specifically I was looking for the information I needed that would have led to a better trade. It took over a year for me to get to a point where made money more often than I lost. Hopefully I can shorten your learning curve. Remember, it’s one thing to know the mechanics of Options trading, and another to do it successfully. I hope to teach both. When I joined Apple 3.0 I was hoping to find an investment forum that would improve my trading. Alas, Apple 3.0 has (in my opinion) devolved into a rumor tracker/discussion group, or maybe it always was. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the company because there weren’t any anti-Apple trolls here. That was a tremendous improvement over the free sites. Apparently trolls aren’t willing to pay to spread their venom.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - ' Then, assume I think it will go down to 260. Let’s not go there until you are totally comfortable with the first tranche of your question.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - ' Let’s say I believe Apple will hit 290 by the end of the year. There are many that would trade such a small delta in such a short time frame. Normally I am not one of those. There just isn’t enough room to cover downside risk. But then in mid October I saw what I believed was a setup (just prior to earnings report) that looked very promising (I posted my trade). The set up proved more than promising. Being new to Options I would avoid near term trades (less than 3 month duration) like the plague. But let’s look at two ways you could play your scenario. #1 would be to Open a long position in the 26 JAN $285 Long Call at $4.53. Breakeven is $289.53 (sans fees). Lowering your Strike to $280 doesn’t help much as the contract premium increases to $6.65. Breakeven lowers to $286.65. In my opinion JAN contracts are priced to perfection with little to no Long Call upside. ROI is barely measurable. #2. On the other hand, a Vertical Call Spread lowers your entry point substantially, reducing your risk while simultaneously increasing your ROI (Return On Investment). A JAN $270/$275 Call Spread (commonly referred to as a $5.00 Spread) at $3.30 lowers your breakeven to $278.30, while increasing your ROI from very, very low single digits to ~50%. How does the Call Spread work? With the Call Spread you are completing two trades simultaneously. The first is Opening a long position (buy) of the JAN $270 Call contract at $12.70, and Opening a Short (sell) position of the JAN $275 Call Contract at $9.40. The $9.40 received reduces your total acquisition cost to $3.30. It also limits how much profit you can make on this trade. Remember this is a $5 Spread. When the position is settled at expiry you will have acquired 100 shares of AAPL at $270 each, and simultaneously sold those shares for $275 each. Max revenue per contract is 100 X $5.00 no matter how high AAPL ultimately went at expiry. You paid (net) $3.30 for this position, which means you profited $1.70. Now I have mixed the per share price with the contract price. When you examine the JAN Options Chain, prices are expressed as per share, but when you place your Order the amount paid reflects that you are acquiring/selling a Contract, which controls 100 shares. The per share price is understood to be the same thing as the Contract price. You quote the share price, you pay the contract price. All the figures used in this example came directly off of Schwab’s AAPL Options Chain. I would not under any circumstances trade a DEC Expiry (December 19, 2025). That’s a lot for someone without prior Options knowledge to absorb. Don’t worry about it. Just post any follow-up questions that may arise from my tutorial. I’d be surprised if there were none.'
  • Roger Schutte on Citi hikes its Apple price target $15 to $315 - 'Nope. (Malik also noted the possibility that Apple could push the release of the base model iPhone 18 from fall 2026 to early 2027.) iPhone 17 chip uses TSMC’s N3P technology and their next gen N2 is in full production NOW. To suggest Apple might change iPhone release timing makes me question his thought processes.'
  • Greg Lippert on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'I’ve used Think or Swim for years when it was owned by TD Ameritrade'
  • Fred Stein on Schwab graphs Apple's technicals, pitches a vertical call option spread (video) - 'Yes, Gregg, I’d love to sign up for your options tutorial. Thanks for the offer.'
  • Gregg Thurman on Seeking Alpha: Apple gets an F - 'The problem, and it is a problem, is that they do take into account future revenues, or if they do, they don’t give Apple’s installed base enough credit. Many on WS have the same intellectual limitation.'