Apple Inc (AAPL)

With all this fear about overspending on data centres, Apple looks smart for sitting on its hands. Why should Apple shell out billions to build this infrastructure when any AI company would happily pay them to be the default chatabot. Shares were up over 3% in November and 13% this year with a big multiple expansion. 

It's like a utility stock. Revenue and earnings growth have been mild or steady the last 5 years. Good balance sheet. You're paying for the brand. Eventually, they will deliver Apple Intelligence, but they always lag in their technology.

The stock is resilient and up, despite not delivering Apple Intelligence yet. 

Apple may be the biggest beneficiary of Google's Gemini 3 success, because Apple paid big money for Google to be the default search engine on its phones.

Owns the infrastructure. Yet topline growth over last 5-6 years is only 5% or so. Multiple of the stock price went from ~20x to 35x today. Multiple expansion is not a good thing to bet on. Absolutely a mature company. Market cap is some crazy number around $4T. They just keep raising prices, and eventually people will seek alternatives.

If you look at the share price 10 years out, it will have to be double the market cap it is today. It'll need to add trillions of dollars of value in the next 10 years, but that's really hard to do because they already dominate where they are. Doesn't mean they won't, it'll just be very hard. 

He trimmed it after establishing a position last April. He sold some shares in order to buy XBI which continues to break out. Be careful with the Tim Cook news (Apple seeking his successor) and the news about Berkshire selling its shares, because there's a lot of resilience in Apple stock. Also, we are now in the reopen where the blackout window on buybacks has reopened--Apple could buy more shares.  

Kicked the new Siri down the road until Q2 or Q3 of 2026, which is only 8-9 months away. Dead money around $200. Then iPhone 17 came out, with a long line of upgrades behind it. Now close to target price, which is when people will be lining up to take profit. 

Write some short-dated (1-2 week) calls using a strike of $275-277.50.

Their lack of huge data centre costs is a major investing advantage; they don't need an AI strategy. They have an installed user base of over 2.35 billion active devices, so any hyperscaler would pay up to access that user base. Also, they delivered a strong quarter (shares ran up before, not after the report).

At this point, pretty fully priced. iPhone 17 seems to have a lot of traction, taking many by surprise. Lots of new features, plus it's in a replacement cycle. If you own it, write some short-dated, 1- or 2-week calls with a strike price of ~$265-270. Not much runway left.

Those who say trade it, don't own it, got blown out today as Apple rallied 4.31%. The new iPhone launch, including China, is doing well. Don't get fooled by the market naysayers. Own it, don't trade it.

He owns a number of the bigger companies but not Apple even though he feels pretty sure it will continue to be a dominant player in the cell phone space. However technologies do change. He prefers Amazon and Microsoft in the mega cap space since they should do a little better in the long term.

Shares are down after the latest iPhone announcement. Historically, though, shares rise 13% on aaverage immediately after the previous 5 iPhone roll-outs.

Though a great company, the single-digit growth doesn't justify a mid-30s PE.