But an amateur -- a Romanian mathematician teaching in Paris -- nailed the numbers
Click to enlarge.
This story never gets old.
An army of Wall Street analysts, backed by the computing power of some of the world's richest banks and brokerage houses, have once again been out-foxed and out-analyzed by rag-tag bunch of bloggers, amateurs and independent investors.
A glance at the chart at right, which lists the 48 analysts we polled in advance of Apple's Q3 earnings report by the accuracy of their estimates for revenue and earnings, will give you the basic picture. With a few exceptions, the pros (in red) were wrong and the amateurs (in blue) were right. As a group, the amateurs were twice as accurate in their predictions as the pros.
Near the bottom: Mighty Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
At the top: Nicolae Mihalache, a Romanian mathematician who teaches at the University of Paris and hangs out at a small investor site called Traderhood. He correctly predicted Apple's (AAPL) 82% growth in sales, its triple digit growth in earnings, its 140% growth in iPhone sales and its 180% growth in iPad sales.
It's something the amateur analysts seem to understand and the pros still don't get
Source: Posts at Eventide
A day before Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to report its 3rd quarter earnings, Robert Paul Leitao thinks he has put his finger on what's wrong with the Street's view of the company.
Leitao, who rides herd over 30 amateur analysts at The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board, has been tracking the gap between Apple's MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 18, 2011 7:54 AM ET
Mean analyst estimate: 7.9 million. The amateurs, as usual, are more bullish than the pros
Source: Company reports, Apple 2.0
Apple (AAPL) is scheduled to report its fiscal third quarter earnings on July 19, a week from today, and in preparation for our quarterly earnings smackdown we've been gathering estimates from the small army of analysts -- profession and amateur -- who follow the company.
The biggest mystery this quarter -- and MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 12, 2011 6:15 AM ET
The largest collection of amateur analysts sees iPhone sales up 110%, iPads up 155%
Data: Posts At Eventide. Chart: PED
Apple (AAPL) will report its earnings for the June quarter on July 19, two weeks from today. The current consensus among Wall Street analysts, according to Thomson Financial, is that the company earned $5.69 per share on sales of $24.67 billion, up 62.1% and 57.2%, respectively.
Impressive as those growth rates might MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 5, 2011 3:20 PM ET
If you ask about sales in the quarter that just ended, you get three very different answers
Sources: Apple 2.0 poll, Thomson Financial, Apple Inc.
Apple's (AAPL) third fiscal quarter of 2011 ended Saturday at midnight. How did it go? That depends whom you ask.
In April, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told analysts he expected Apple to earn $5.03 per share on sales of $23 billion. But given how Apple tends to MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 26, 2011 11:34 AM ET
What investors want to know is whether its stock will ever pop
Source: Jeff Fosberg, AFB
The investors who follow the ups and downs of Apple's (AAPL) share price on The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board often look with a mixture of envy and dismay at the price-to-earnings ratios of Amazon (81) and Netflix (76). Apple, by comparison, seems downright cheap with a trailing P/E of 15.57.
Yet Amazon (AMZN) and Netflix MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 13, 2011 10:44 AM ET
After six years and an eight-fold increase in share price, maybe it's about time
Splits are indicated by gray circles. Click to enlarge.
On Feb. 28, 2005, with Apple (AAPL) trading at $88.99 a share, the company issued a 2:1 split. The stock closed that day at $44.86. Within a year it was once again selling for more than $80 a share.
At The Mac Observer's Apple Finance Board, where the question MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 9, 2011 6:07 AM ET
Our survey of analysts suggests that Apple is set to report its first 4 million Mac quarter
Click to enlarge. Source: Company reports, Q1 2011 consensus
In the Gartner report issued this week, U.S. sales of Apple's (AAPL) Macintosh computers grew 23% year over year last quarter while overall PC sales (even including the Mac) fell 6.6%.
That's been the story for much of 2010: PC sales weak, Macintosh sales strong.
But the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 14, 2011 5:00 AM ET
Investors tracking a flurry of late trading Wednesday think they smell a rat
One of the regulars at Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board who calls himself (or herself) AnAAPLaDay was curious what triggered the furious trading in Apple (AAPL) shares that led to a five-point drop in the space of a minute at 4:49 p.m. Wednesday.
That's two minutes before briefing.com ran this news alert:
That 26% was a typo. The correct figure MORE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Intel Corp | 26.73 | -0.43 | -1.58% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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