Apple Inc (AAPL)

Don’t confuse a good story with a good investment. Tripled over the last 3 years and the market expected this to continue. Really a product of a fund-filled story. As Apple moved higher on earnings, mutual funds came in behind and reweighted to the index which pushed it higher and higher on supply and demand. Unfortunately, expectations have come down and funds have caused more volume to go into the market and pushed the price down further and further.

Fourth-quarter is coming up and if it gets clobbered, he’ll want to see why. If the quarter turns out not badly, he thinks he would add to it. A long-term bull on the company. There is lots of room on the upside, especially in developing nations.

(Top Pick Feb 2/12, Up, 11.92%) Has not been easy to hold the last 3 months. Wishes he had added to it after the 30% sell off. It got ahead of itself. All the bad news. We will find out what’s going on next Wednesday.

Ranks very nicely. Trading at 10X earnings with an estimated growth rate of 20% going forward. If growth rate backed down, a 15% still gives you a PEG ratio of 0.66, which is very cheap. If it goes down to 10%, the PEG is still 1.0 so anyway you cut it, this stock is very cheap.

Has already bought some today. It is a great opportunity to buy the best branded company in the world at a discount.

Just announced good sales in China but stock price hasn’t reflected this. How come? A lot of concerns in China are on margins which are not quite as high as North American margins. Apple pretty well revolutionized a big part of the technology space and has some of the largest revenues of the technology sector. Valuations look fairly attractive. When you get into such large companies with such large revenues, especially with margins quite high, you wonder how they will replace that, so she tends to stay away. (See Top Picks.)

Market is driven by earnings and fundamental growth, but it is also driven by psychology. The drop in stock price from $700-$523 is more because of psychology because not much is changed with this company.

Big question “is it a value trap, or not” as it looks cheap at only 11X forward earnings. If you look at the 2^nd derivative of earnings, this company has very, very high margins. A company that attains the margins they have seldom keep it. As the innovation cycle has waned, we will see the competition come in and continually chip away at those margins. Thinks it is a value trap.

Has not violated a long term trend line. It could go down to $490 and not violate it. The selloff is over. It could still run up, technically.

Buy Feb $500 Puts / Sell Feb $520 Puts. There are very low expectations from the street and he doesn’t think they will do that badly. Even if they go nowhere you make money with this strategy.

The Eliot wave theory says there is 3 waves. The middle is usually the longest. They we had the third and final wave of this bull cycle. There is psychology behind it. Thinks the stock will settle down and have a down wave possibly $450-$500 and be there for a while.

Has sold off by over 30% for no particular reason. Trading at 14X trailing earnings and with cash on the balance sheet and a dividend yield of about 2%, this is now a value play. Doesn’t have to grow at much more than 15% per year to justify a $600 stock price. With Apple TV, it could be a game changer for the entire entertainment industry, and this is not valued at all in the stock.

(Top Pick Dec 14/11, Up 40.12%) There was lots of noise, some artificial. This is a sell off due to a tax story.

Doesn’t know that it was unjustified that it was driven down so much. There are a lot of fundamental impulses and there is a lot of psychology. There is the chance of cap gains taxes rising and triggered the taking of profits and that started the sliding and then it became a momentum play on the downside. He views this as opportunity. They are a supply constrained company – they can’t make them fast enough. Margins will drop because of change of product mix. The iPhone is a very high margin product. Lots of cash. Own this in balance. He trimmed 6 or 7 times since he bought it in 2006.

Has full confidence that the company is going to do great things with future iPhone sales and tablets. Has a price target of $750. There is still one week left for tax loss selling, so the next 5 days may lead to volatility.