Another Apple blowout quarter. Once again, the Street blew it

But an amateur -- a Romanian mathematician teaching in Paris -- nailed the numbers

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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.

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Posted in: Apple, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Mac, Morgan Stanley, Quarterly earnings, Turley Muller, Goldman Sachs, Katy Huberty, Wall Street, Daniel Ernst, Earnings Smackdown, Apple Finance Board, Hudson Square, Nicolae Mihalache, Navin Nagrani, Traderhood

• The new king of Apple analysts

  He's a Romanian blogger with a Harvard MBA who lives in Finland. Go figure.

  What if you took all the estimates by all the analysts who write about Apple (AAPL) -- and there are dozens -- and ranked them by how closely their predictions matched the company's quarterly earnings reports. Would you be interested in who came in first?

  Daniel Tello, a Venezuelan amateur with a strong track record of his own, MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 22, 2010 7:48 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Daniel Tello, Deagol, Financial, Horace Dediu, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Nokia, Research in Motion, Tablets, Turley Muller

• The cost of 14 million iPhones

  Apple must have paid a heavy penalty to ramp up production so rapidly

  Two of the biggest surprises in Apple's (AAPL) Q4 earnings report Monday were the sharp rise in the number of iPhones Apple sold in the quarter (14.1 million, up 91.4% year over year) and the drop in a key measure of the company's profitability: gross margin (GM), which dropped to 36.9 from 39.1 last quarter.

  The two are related, MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Oct 19, 2010 9:02 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Tablets, Turley Muller

• Earnings Smackdown: The best and worst Apple analysts

  The bloggers beat the pros once again this quarter, but not quite as handily as before

  The professional analysts who track Apple (AAPL) for banks and brokerage houses may have been surprised by the $15.7 billion in revenue the company reported Tuesday -- an all-time record for Apple in what is traditionally one of its weakest quarters.

  But the blogger-analysts we polled in advance of the earnings report were not. In fact, MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 21, 2010 5:53 AM ET
  Posted in: Alexis Cabot, Andy Zaky, Apple, Daniel Tello, Deagol, Jeff Fidacaro, Quarterly earnings, Scott Craig, Smackdown, Turley Muller, Vijay Rakesh, Yair Reiner

• How Turley Muller calls Apple

  Fiscal Q3 estimates from the blogger-analyst whose track record is the envy of Wall Street

  There's no shortage of analysts at the banks and brokerage houses who claim expertise on Apple (AAPL) and publish earnings estimates in advance of the company's quarterly reports.

  But for the past year and a half, the most accurate predictions -- by far -- were the ones made by Financial Alchemist's Turley Muller, an occasional blogger and MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 8, 2010 7:21 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Quarterly earnings, Turley Muller

• Apple's blow-out quarter: The bloggers called it. The Street blew it.

  Once again, the armchair analysts humiliate Wall Street's professionals

  There's almost nothing good to say about the estimates published by professional analysts in advance of Apple's (AAPL) second quarter earnings. Not only did the pros badly underestimate almost every aspect of the company's business -- from revenue and earnings to unit sales -- but they were bested in every category by a rag-tag group of bloggers, day traders and armchair analysts.

  The MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 20, 2010 7:13 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Quarterly earnings, Smackdown, Turley Muller

• How much is AAPL worth?

  $267 a share, according to Trefis.com's model. But feel free to build your own.

  The analysts at Trefis figure that the iPhone accounts for 51.5% and the iPad only 4.3% of Apple's (AAPL) fair market value, which they estimate at about $267 a share -- nearly $20 above Friday's closing price.

  How do we know? Because their model of the company (right) -- fully interactive and satisfyingly drillable -- is neatly displayed MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 17, 2010 4:32 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Daniel Tello, Deagol, Trefis, Turley Muller

• How big was Apple's second quarter?

  The fourth in a series of previews of Apple's results for fiscal Q2 2010

  Over the past week we've sampled analysts' expectation for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone, Mac and iPod sales over the fiscal quarter that ended March 27.

  Today we look at the bottom line -- revenue and earnings per share -- for what should be the company's best second quarter ever, especially given how depressed the computer market was in the MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Apr 17, 2010 8:26 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Quarterly earnings, Revenue, Turley Muller

• At nearly 29 times earnings, Apple is still undervalued - analyst

  It's been a busy week for long second looks at Apple (AAPL).

  Some, like Jason Calcanis' narcissistic The Case Against Apple, were prompted by the controversies swirling around its iPhone marketing strategies and App Store approval procedures.

  Others, like Peter Burrows' Why Apple Is More Valuable than Google (GOOG) in Businessweek, by a long-term shift in market capitalizations that has pushed America's No. 4 computer maker (market cap $148 billion) ahead of MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 12, 2009 11:22 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Deferred earnings, iPhone, Turley Muller

• Report: iPhone margins are nearly 60%

  Turley Muller has been arguing for more than a year that Wall Street seriously underestimates the impact of the iPhone on Apple's (AAPL) bottom line.

  Muller, a former mortgage trading analyst, currently unemployed, tracks Apple's performance in his blog Financial Alchemist, where his estimates of Apple's earnings put the Street's consensus to shame. Over the past four quarters, he has missed reported EPS by 4 cents, 2 cents, 1 cent and MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 29, 2009 10:04 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Gross margins, iPhone, Quarterly earnings, Turley Muller