Bill Donahue on Apple's in the AI catbird seat - 'And the link to the media story: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ai-scribe-system-hallucinations-9.7197049'
on Apple soars to a new record close: $298.97 - 'Darren – I ran your comment through Gemini and here’s the short answer… “Premarket is often just low-volume ‘noise’ where macro jitters drag prices down on thin liquidity. The 9:30 AM reversal marks the entry of institutional ‘real money’ that ignores these early head-fakes to buy high-quality names at a relative discount.”'
on The delayed launch of Samsung's Galaxy 26 gave Apple's iPhones a boost - 'A bit OT: Since late May I’ve made 4 trades, all deep in the money, moving the Strike progressively higher with each trade because AAPL wasn’t content to laze around. Tomorrow is the last day I can trade my MAY $272.50/$275 Call Spreads. They are going to finish the cycle about $25 in the money. That’s huge. My main tranche still has two months to go before expiry, with WWDC occurring in about 3 weeks. That trade is up ~41% with ~25% remaining before expiry and requires a Close above $275 to achieve max profit. I’m thinking of rolling all of my contract into JUL $280/$285 Call Spreads. With the little bit of cash I have left over from my initial $40,000 to test the waters, I will net a little over 104% ROI on my March investment by July expiry, all the while targeting a 30% ROI, while moving my positions up, exploiting AAPL’s run. After July earnings I’m thinking of increasing my ROI goal to 40%-45% (still in the money) for OCT. If I’ve calculated this correctly, those contracts will be ~$10 in the money when purchased. Does anybody see anything fundamental with Apple that would cause AAPL to decline more than $10 after July earnings and GUIDANCE by OCT expiry? Of course GUIDANCE will be key, but I’m expecting another round of strong GUIDANCE. Unless there is no interest in my options trades I will continue posting them.'
on Apple soars to a new record close: $298.97 - 'AI still delivering. I just sold a parcel of MRVL for $181. I bought that parcel only 12 months ago for $55. With an AAPL ATH that got me a small sale at $299.80 it’s been a good day.'
on Apple soars to a new record close: $298.97 - 'Cisco, which jumped $2.58 to close at $101.87 after setting an all-time high of $102.01 earlier in the day, is up $22.10 or 21.69% after hours following the release of earnings. It’s been a very good day for many of the leading names in the tech sector. Micron also jumped 4.83% to close at $803.63.'
on The delayed launch of Samsung's Galaxy 26 gave Apple's iPhones a boost - 'With integrated memory, Apple’s SoC costs would STILL be driven by the production costs for the wafers. It seems to me there’s no significant incremental costs for Apple’s SoC based memory, unlike those vendors who have to pay the price for, and compete for -separate- memory components. Now that wouldn’t hold for persistent storage, where Apple would still have to compete for similar products.'
on The delayed launch of Samsung's Galaxy 26 gave Apple's iPhones a boost - 'Here’s the relevant data from Samsung’s 1Q26 quarterly report: Samsung smartphone portion of MX revenues last quarter (by my estimations) had a +3.5% YoY revenue increase to ~$20.4B and using IDC sales of 62.8M, gives an ASP of $324, yet saw a -35% DROP in YoY operating profits, down to just ~$1.43B, again divided by 62.8M = net smartphone profits around $23/$324 sale = net profitability of just 7.0%. This drop was due to decreased low/mid sales, memory costs, delayed & a very short Galaxy S26 sales quarter. Here’s their color commentary: 1Q 2026 Results ➢ MX • Sales & profit increased centered on premium product mix • Secured single-digit profitability via proactive cost optimization 2Q 2026 outlook: (includes full quarter of profitable premium Galaxy S sales and newly released A series midrangers and budget phones w/price increases) ➢ MX • Amid diminishing launch effects, drive revenue growth YoY via flagship sales & new A series • Decline in profitability expected despite flagship-centric sales & resource optimization 2H2026 outlook (includes 8th Gen Z Foldables launch in late July/Aug) ➢ MX • Solidify flagship-led sales & upselling initiatives to pursue comprehensive growth • Address evolving customer needs through strengthening foldable product development • Pursue efficiency initiatives to mitigate impact of rising cost pressures on profitability (If you thought Apple earnings reports were heavy on jargon, Samsung’s are riddled with Corporate-Speak cliches and vague goals of “efficiency”) (increase prices vs sales promotions which see-saw revenue vs profits, culling lower priced models & ranges, reduce costs by going to even lower cost, lower tier Samsung Exynos or Qualcomm CPU’s & MediaTek versions for budget models, push users to higher margin models, etc.) yet despite all this mitigation, MX will likely lose money over the entire year. Why? Because Samsung can’t control all of its external costs and because they already have lower margins in these low/mid service ranges, they have little margin buffer to work with. I suspect if we search and examine Xiaomi, Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Lenovo/Motorola, earnings, we will see the same thing. For some, they, like Samsung, have other divisions to ease the pain or even mitigate any losses in smartphones, but that can’t last forever. It’s not clear how long this AI memory surge will persist but somewhere, smartphone makers will face losing money for a while and hard decisions will occur.'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'Hi, Cy. I’m guessing our average split-adjusted purchase price was about $4.50/share. That comes to a present ROi on the remaining shares of 66.666…X. That’s nothing compared to NVDA’s rise, of course, but it has served to keep the wolf from our door since the Great Recession. Tough times, those years….'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'My best purchase at $3.33 from Oct 27, 2008 (and a bunch of other lots around then ranging up to $3.78) have done some heavy lifting for sure. An 8,888% gain! I know others have done a lot better and I’m happy for them! Wishing I’d pulled the trigger on AAPL around the Microsoft bailout time. Thought about it and I was (stupidly) investing high risk back then so made sense. Would have been (an even bigger) game changer!'
on Apple at $300: Why now? - 'I certainly hope that AAPL keeps going up. I suspect it may go a bit higher then flatten out till the next earnings report comes out showing higher earnings.'
on The delayed launch of Samsung's Galaxy 26 gave Apple's iPhones a boost - '“Apple grew its market share in each of the Big 3 US carriers. Its share grew the most at Verizon to 77% in Q1 2026.” Wasn’t it Verizon which really preferred not to deal with the Iphone way back so they favored Android devices. How is that working out for them now? Maybe they don’t care anymore but subsidizing iPhones is usually more expensive to the carrier. I guess if your customers want high end phones and Samsung hasn’t delivered the new one then the users on the margin will switch. What is really telling is there aren’t as many High end Android models from different manufacturers for them to choose so they leave the ecosystem. A bit different than Iphone users behavior.'
on Apple's in the AI catbird seat - 'so basically, what we here already knew … that the iphone installed base with its massive size will be the most important player when the time comes to roll out profitable AI in smart phones … am I right?'
on Premarket: Apple is red - 'Steven Philips said: “Yeah, two Schwab advisors didn’t like my all Apple approach – so I ditched them.” **Steven, I had a similar experience with my previous Schwab advisor. He presented an alternate investment opportunity several times and was disappointed my wife and I decided to stay 100% invested in AAPL.'
