Like the tortoise in Achilles' footrace, they may be perpetually unreachable goals
"There's scant evidence that the stock market itself has paid much if any attention to analysts' price targets in recent years," writes Needham's Charlie Wolf in a note to clients Thursday that raises his own Apple (AAPL) target $80 to $620.
He's got a point. the average target among the two-dozen analysts we sampled on October 19, the day after Apple's Q4 2011 earnings report, was $520. Yet that same day the stock fell from $422.24 to $398.62.
Now, with Apple's share price setting new records on a daily basis (it closed Wednesday at $476.68) the mean target, according to Thomson/First Call, has crawled ahead to just over $565.
"Pundits have written scores of articles that purport to explain Apple's tepid valuation," Wolf concludes. "In our opinion, all have failed. And so have we. But we continue to believe the valuation exercise is one worth undertaking if only to calibrate the difference between Apple's current share price and the fair price generated by our model."
Below: Wolf new model. Gotta love that Fudge Factor.
Source: Needham & Co.
Breaks through previous intraday record of $427.75 set last week
UPDATE: Apple closed Wednesday up $4.41 (1.04%), to hit a new all-time high of $429.11. At one point in afternoon training it hit $429.47.
- - -
Apple (AAPL) quickly set a new intraday high Wednesday and kept climbing in early morning trading, although it's not clear why.
It could be that investors are moving into the stock ahead of next week's quarterly earnings MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 18, 2012 10:08 AM ET
Buying puts or calls just before the numbers come out is a fool's game
Click to enlarge. Source: Kim Klaiman via Seeking Alpha
Apple (AAPL) is a company that tends to surprise Wall Street every time it reports its quarterly earnings, usually on the upside, occasionally on the down.
As a result, the stock often makes big moves the next day -- sometimes as much as 5% and 6%.
Given the power of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 15, 2012 8:12 AM ET
Strike prices range from $335 to $400 as traders scramble to deal with a market in free fall
Monday 10:30 a.m. snapshot. Source: thinkorswim.com. Click to enlarge.
A hedge-fund trader hoping to make some quick money in Apple (AAPL) weekly options would be hard-pressed to make sense of the chart at right, a snapshot of thinkorswim.com's AAPL options board taken at 10:30 a.m. Monday morning.
The bottom two graphs show open interest in MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 8, 2011 11:35 AM ET
After a five months of jagged ups and downs, AAPL overtakes a record set on Feb. 16, 2011
Investors who stuck with Apple (AAPL) through thick and thin this year got their earthly reward Friday.
With only two trading days left before what's expected to be yet another boffo earnings report, the stock broke out of its Max Pain trading range and set a new all-time record.
After hitting an intraday high of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 15, 2011 4:07 PM ET
Take away the crash of 2008, and you can see Apple's share price go up $100 every year
Click to enlarge. Source: AAPLInvestors.net
Terry Gregory, who collects what he calls "useful stats" at AAPLInvestors.net, has created the chart at right that shows the year-over-year percentage increases in Apple's (AAPL) share price every month for the past five and half years, starting with January 2006.
Investors troubled by the stock's lackluster performance in MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 10, 2011 6:19 AM ET
On June 17, he told readers to buy AAPL at $320. The stock took off two days later.
The stock hit a 7-mos. low on June 20
We gave Andy Zaky, an independent analyst with a enviable track record, a hard time a few weeks ago.
He had just published a report on his Bullish Cross blog (reposted on Seeking Alpha) advising investors to buy Apple (AAPL) at $320. Although his three MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 8, 2011 7:06 AM ET
Apple, as hedge fund managers are well aware, is one stock that always bounces back
Whenever I see a chart like the one at right, which traces the trajectory of Apple's (AAPL) share price over the past 36 days, I'm reminded of Jason Schwarz's "Apple: Seven Reasons Shorts Love It," a supremely cynical view of the stock market that may be the best thing The Street published in all of 2009. MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 7, 2011 6:58 AM ET
With the Dow up and no negative news on the wire, the stock fell off a cliff Thursday
Thursday was another one of those bizarre trading days for Apple (AAPL). The stock opened higher, flirted with some prices north of $328 in the morning and made it through the early afternoon without suffering much damage, despite the turmoil in Greece.
Then, at about 1:50 p.m., the volume jumped and the stock fell MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 16, 2011 3:43 PM ET
If you're looking for evidence of manipulation, Friday's close was picture-perfect
Volume rose sharply and Apple's share price collapsed in the last half hour
"The easiest way to think of options," wrote The Market Skeptics's Eric deCarbonnel in a prescient 2009 post, "is as a type of insurance. Investors pay a premium to protect themselves against sharp swings in the market. If these sharp swings don't happen, those selling options (option market MORE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| 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% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| 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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