$133. Not bad.

Larry

Oops.

Nah, see my post from 1/28 above.

Still hanging in there.

Interesting info on gold and the Apple watch, who knows?

Demand for Apple Watch could use up third of world's gold | Cult of Mac

This got a laugh from me, simply because Apple was sued, and lost, to a company that makes nothing, has no employees and basically has 0 presence.

Apple Inc accuses company with no employees of ‘exploiting’ iTunes patents after US$533M infringement ruling | Financial Post

Apple Plays Odds for Overturning $533 Million Verdict - Bloomberg Business


https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/why-do-patent-trolls-go-texas-its-not-bbq

Maybe this was discussed earlier. Do those of you who have AAPL stock put a stop limit order in place to protect your downside? I am thinking back to how AOL was king until that one day..........

I don't have a stop limit in place but I see a world of difference in apple and aol.

aapl is too big to fail.

:D

There's a court in West Texas where all the bogus patent claims are filed and the big companies usually lose. There are companies that do nothing other than pick up patents for this reason. It's a well-known problem in the tech industry.

It's 99% of the lawyers that give the rest a bad name.

I'm not an AAPL fanboi, but I thought this Modern Family episode was kind of cool

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vy3jUOBxQuI?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

iPhone orders remain strong, Apple likely to top 54M units in March quarter, Barclays says...

iPhone orders remain strong, Apple likely to top 54M units in March quarter, Barclays says

Apple admitted to the Dow.Replaces AT&T...about time!

Apple Watch gets booth in trendy Tokyo department store, more planned


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1426619928.jpg

Not sure this is the path I would have liked Apple to head (a $10K watch and whatever follows it), but hey, it's only stock value, overpriced products and brand cache, right?

Interesting that two films will be soon offered to us:

- A theatrical film starring Michael Fassbender as Jobs. Theme - unknown. Maybe more insightful than the version with Ashton Kutcher.
- A documentary, Steve Jobs: "The Man in the Machine". An unflinching look at the man behind Apple, Inc.

The idolatry from Apple/Jobs fans upon his death struck me reminiscent of Lance Armstrong's image at his peak, at least for all but the most skeptical among us. History usually has a way of getting down to the basics as it eventually did (we hope) with Armstrong.

Sherwood
(owns some APPL)

was thinking of you guys reading this:
Apple Watch hype costs investors $66.1B | America's Markets

That's just crazy valuation. Oh, but they have an ugly smartwatch on the horizon. But at least it's over priced. - That helps.

Seriously, why don't they grow in some sort of proportion to their funds? Maybe buy Comcast, Sony, or something. Oh, right; the Applewatch will be huge! --LOOKIE-- ...gold supplies decimated three times over... LOL!

Earnings today should be interesting.

The MAY ATM straddle (131 strike ) is priced right around 9.85 cents. Just to keep it simple call it 10 bucks. At that price the market is looking for a 7.6% move give or take. There is some time on this one. Last earnings we were looking at the straddle that expired a day or two later.

As I have noted in the past, my preference is typically to sell these straddles into earnings and if I am wrong then trade around them. In this case based on what I have been seeing and reading I think the play is to be long the straddle, I get the feeling this one deserves more premium than the 10 bucks. I am not so inclined to be buying 10 dollar straddles so I'll probably pass.

Should be very interesting.

Boom!

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 second quarter ended March 28, 2015. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $45.6 billion and net profit of $10.2 billion, or $1.66 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.8 percent compared to 39.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 69 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
The growth was fueled by record second quarter sales of iPhone and Mac and all-time record performance of the App Store.

“We are thrilled by the continued strength of iPhone, Mac and the App Store, which drove our best March quarter results ever,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, in a statement. “We’re seeing a higher rate of people switching to iPhone than we’ve experienced in previous cycles, and we’re off to an exciting start to the June quarter with the launch of Apple Watch.”

• iPhone: 61.170 million units, $40.282 billion revenue (vs. 43.719 million units (+40%), $26.064 billion revenue (+55%) YOY)
• iPad: 12.623 million units, $5.428 billion revenue (vs. 16.350 million units (-23%), $7.610 billion revenue (-29%) YOY)
• Mac: 4.563 million units, $5.615 billion revenue (vs. 4.136 million units (+10%), $5.519 billion revenue (+2%) YOY)
• Services: $4.996 billion revenue (vs. $4.573 billion revenue (+9%) YOY) (includes revenue from the iTunes Store, App Store, Mac App Store, iBooks Store, AppleCare, Apple Pay, licensing and other services.)
• Other Products: $1.689 billion revenue (vs. $1,880 billion revenue (-10%) YOY) (includes sales of iPod, Apple TV, Beats Electronics and Apple-branded and third-party accessories.)

“The tremendous customer demand for our products and services in the March quarter drove revenue growth of 27 percent and EPS growth of 40 percent,” said Luca Maestri, Apple’s CFO, in a statement. “Cash flow from operations was also outstanding at $19.1 billion.”

Apple is providing the following guidance for its fiscal 2015 third quarter:
• revenue between $46 billion and $48 billion
• gross margin between 38.5 percent and 39.5%
• operating expenses between $5.65 billion and $5.75 billion
• other income/(expense) of $350 million
• tax rate of 26.3%

Apple will provide live streaming of its Q2 2015 financial results conference call beginning at 2:00 p.m. PDT on April 27, 2015 at Apple - Quarter 2 - 2015 Financial Results.

The consensus estimate from analysts polled by Thomson Reuters calls for Apple to report earnings of $2.16 a share on revenue of $56.08 billion. In the second quarter last year, the company posted earnings of $1.66 a share, which beat analysts’ expectations of $1.46 a share. Revenue of $45.646 billion beat the consensus estimate of $43.563 billion. In January, Apple said sales would total between $52 billion and $55 billion for the three-month period, and gross margin would fall between 38.5% and 39.5%.

The non-GAAP whisper number is $2.31 a share, indicating even more positive underlying sentiment.

Yep. That bet paid off.

I think I deserve a good cigar and scotch tonight.

When did you go long? Did you post it somewhere on this forum?

I bought on May 27 of last year, just before the split. Thought for sure I was going to get in at the peak and ride it down....up 48.6% since then. Now where is my Delorean so I can go back and put everything into options :D

Analysts predictions I read today run from $142 to $180/share...

Watch the straddle implode on the opening

Just love the stock market:

AAPL has 2nd best quarter ever and how does the market celebrate? Drops 1% :/

Oldest market cliche ever: "buy on the rumor, sell on the news."

I'm happy with my 945% gain

Apple Watch integration into vehicles is starting with Porsche & BMW...

https://youtu.be/T1S_huYs-lU

The May 131 straddle offered at 7 and a quacker... That big sucking sound is the vols being bled out of the options

Today I was glad my apple calls are really deep ITM and with plenty of time to wait.

Apple is able to start buying back its shares on Friday after the 48 hour window.

It should be interesting to see if the stock rebounds after dropping 4% after fantastic earnings. I suspect that it is the May 1st calls holding back the stock as Wall Street wants to limit its payout on the calls.

I plan on re-entering the stock tomorrow or Friday.

Any other insight to the drop post-earnings? Anything I should be aware of before I buy some Apple stock in the $128-$130 range?

A 'material amount' for Apple would have to be north of a billion, I think.

also.... Apple Watch delays may be due to faulty taptic engine - CNET

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1430360534.jpg

Just out of curiosity how is it that you think “Wall Street” manipulates a stock like AAPL ?

AAPL trades on somewhere in the area of 20 different platforms obviously most notable the NASDAQ. On the NASDAQ alone there are north of 100 firms who make markets in AAPL. There are also hundreds of other firms who are liquidity providers and obviously thousands of firms who trade it on an institutional basis. On the options side: The May 1st expiration is a “weekly” so the OI in them is tiny compared to the standard expiration. There are also dozens of firms who make markets in the options and hundreds more who are liquidity providers in the options. They all take both sides of the market.

So how do those thousands of liquidity providers, all with different interests work in concert to manipulate a stock like AAPL which trades somewhere in the area of 50 million shares a day? Why would they when the open interest in the near the money “weekly” options don’t have huge OI?


By the way. At the close before earnings the stock was roughly 131. Over the last couple days you could have covered any call you sold for pennys on the dollar even before the stock sold off. Implied volatility collapsed (as it should) after earnings. So, if you were a "Wall Strret" firm and you were short a boat load of those calls you could have easily covered for a nice win and not traded a single share of stock. Of course the firms who were short those calls I will guarantee you were also long stock or other calls as a hedge. No one, well let me rephrase that, no one who lasts very long, shorts naked options into earnings.

Example and sign of manipulation:

The Wall Street Journal comes out with two articles today about Apple.

The first article is that Apple may owe back taxes to the EU due to their tax agreement with Ireland. WSJ states that Apple disclosed this in their earnings filing. What WSJ did not state is that the same disclosure was made in October 2014 with Apple's previous filing. The information is irrelevant and 6 months old.

The second article is that Apple had a defective supplier of tactic engines in their watches and had to solely rely on a second supplier. Beyond the headline is that none of the defect watches were sold. Again, this information was known a few months ago and is irrelevant.



I do agree that there are a lot of firms that buy and sell Nasdaq stocks. That does not mean that the stock cannot be manipulated by a few firms working together. The main firms know the stock algorithims that cause other firms to buy or sell stocks and manipulate those othe firms to their advantage to cause the sotck price to rise or fall as desired.

The implication that the WSJ is working in conjunction with firms to keep a lid on the stock so a tiny number of weekly call options can go out worthless is laughable. Where is the payoff for the WSJ. The OI in those options is very small.

Yea it does mean that a small number of firms working together CANT manipulate a stock like AAPL since its too deep, trades on so many platforms and does massive volume per day.

If you were a principle for one of those "other" firms who by your assertion are being taken advantage of by a few larger firms why in the world would you trade in that market place? There are enough platforms to trade a stock like AAPL and enough liquidity that its a pretty clean market.

I am not saying that as a blanket statement. There are issues that don't trade much in volume and are not listed all over the place and have few firms which are liquidity providers. Those issues have a higher probability of having a firm or firms try and manipulate them. In this day and age even thats not all to easy.

There is not enough OI In the weekly AAPL options for anyone to bother nor would they have much effect on the stock price, given the size and depth of the market in the stock.

So, what is the takeaway from the earnings report?

Apple has more money laying around than they know what to do with, apparently.

$202 billion?