October 3, 2012

  • AppleWatch: Oct 17 Rumors of Apple’s iPad Mini

    Will Apple Launch iPad Mini This Month?
    By Emily Knapp | More Articles
    October 03, 2012
    Analysts, investors, and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) aficionados alike have been closely tracking news on what could be the Cupertino-based company’s biggest step forward since it introduced the first iPad in 2010. And now it seems that much-speculated device could be hitting stores in time for the crucial holiday shopping season.
    Of course, we’re talking about the iPad Mini. Media reports have Apple holding a press event on October 17 to unveil the smaller tablet. The company is expected to send out invitations to reporters on October 10, both Fortune and Mashable have reported, though as usual, Apple has confirmed nothing.
    Apple has been a huge winning stock pick for Wall St. Cheat Sheet Newsletter subscribers. Don’t waste another minute — click here and get more of our CHEAT SHEET stock picks now.
    It promises to be a big shopping season for tablets, with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Samsung (SSNLF.PK) all releasing new products. Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, in particular, promises to be a real seller. The company currently leads the market for smaller-screen tablets with its 7-inch Kindle Fire, which debuted in November 2011, and unveiled its second-generation Kindle Fire HD family on September 6. The smaller tablets start at $199.
    Despite its lead, Amazon won’t go unchallenged — Barnes & Noble rolled out new versions of its tablet, also in high-definition, on September 26. The new 7-inch Nook HD also starts at $199. And like Amazon, Barnes & Noble also has a larger version of the tablet, with a slightly higher price point: a 9-inch Nook HD+, starting at $269. Amazon’s 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD with 4G LTE starts at $499, and more closely competes with Apple’s latest iPad than either of Barnes & Noble’s devices.
    Apple’s second- and third-generation iPads, which start at $399 and $499, respectively, both have 9.7-inch screens. The third-generation iPad is the first with 4G LTE technology, but it will cost customers an extra $130 more than the same-generation Wi-Fi only version. Apple’s rumored iPad Mini, on the other hand, is expected to have a 7.85-inch screen — more comparable to the $199 models available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble — and a lower price tag to match.
    Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Samsung tablets all run versions of Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system, and now Google, too, has its own branded tablet, the Nexus 7, yet another 7-inch tablet starting at $199. But Apple’s iPad Mini, like all of the company’s mobile devices, would be running on its iOS mobile operating system, giving customers a bit more variety in the lower-end market.
    A lower-end, smaller iPad would open up a whole new market to Apple just as its share of the tablet market is beginning to decline. Apple is likely to end the year with a 66 percent share of the market, based on shipments of 106 million, Pacific Crest Securities predicted Tuesday. The research firm predicts Amazon will take 11 percent of the market, followed by Samsung with 6 percent, Google with 4 percent, and Microsoft and Asus with 3 percent each.

    From http://wallstcheatsheet.com/stocks/will-apple-launch-ipad-mini-this-month.html/

    AAPL trades at $663-$670 – it feels like a great time to buy..
    GOOG trades at $743
    HPQ languished last look below $20…
    FB trades around $21-22

September 21, 2012

August 28, 2012

July 8, 2012

June 27, 2012

  • FBWatch and IPO’s: ServiceNow IPO to come amid Facebook hangover

    ServiceNow IPO to come amid Facebook hangover 

    By Rex Crum 
    Jun 27, 2012 14:51:16 (ET)

    SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A market for initial public stock offerings that has cooled in the aftermath of Facebook Inc.’s IPO could see its first signs of reawakening this week when cloud-based software company ServiceNow Inc. makes its public debut.

    ServiceNow (NOWTrade ) is scheduled to set its IPO price after Thursday’s market close. The company plans to offer 11.65 million shares at between $15 and $17 each and begin trading Friday morning. Morgan Stanley, which was the lead underwriter for Facebook’s (FBTrade ) May 18, IPO, is also the heading up ServiceNow’s initial stock offering.

    ServiceNow specializes in cloud-based software offerings that businesses use to automate day-to-day operations of data centers and other computing environments. The impression from IPO market observers is that the company is in one of the most-desirable sectors for technology, and for going public this year.

    “If there is a company that’s in excellent shape for an IPO, it’s ServiceNow,” said Scott Sweet, director of research firm IPO Boutique, who cited the company’s revenue growth and business sector among the reasons its IPO has been eagerly awaited.

    In its IPO filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, ServiceNow reported a net loss of $5.6 million on revenue of $47.4 million for the quarter ended March 31. During the same period a year ago, ServiceNow earned $3 million on $25.2 million in revenue. The company is on a fiscal-year calendar that ends in June.

    And since the start of the year, three other companies in the cloud-based software market have gone public and put in strong stock-market gains. Guidewire Software Inc. (GWRETrade ) went public on Jan. 25 at $13 a share, and its stock is up by 123%, to close Tuesday at $29 a share, while Demandware Inc. (DWRETrade ) shares are up by 58% since debuting at $16 each on March 15, and Splunk Inc. (SPLKTrade ), which went public on April 19 at $17 a share and has climbed 63% to almost $28 a share.

    But there still remain some concerns about the IPO market since Facebook went public at $38 a share, and hasn’t touched that level over the last month. Facebook’s shares on Wednesday traded at around $32 a share, down 15% from the company’s IPO price.

    IPO market researcher Renaissance Capital said in a report this week that during the second quarter of the year, the number of U.S. IPO deals has fallen 41% from a year ago, to 27 IPOs, and much of that slowdown is due to reaction to Facebook’s less-than-stellar debut.

    “Facebook’s May debut was supposed to prove that U.S. IPOs were back on course,” said IPO market researcher Renaissance Capital, in a report this week. “Instead, a mismanaged offering and heightened market volatility led to an abrupt, monthlong shutdown.”

    And while ServiceNow is seen as being a strong IPO candidate, Sweet said there are no guarantees where IPOs are concerned.

    “Going forward, if this IPO were to be mispriced, it would have a catastrophic effect on the IPO market,” Sweet said.

May 2, 2012

  • AppleWatch: Earnings Season Dip

    My etrade account provides me interesting news on Apple but it’s impossible to share outside of the app.

    3 Articles on Apple.


     

    Bears of May have come to play
     
    12:01 AM ET 5/1/12 | Marketwatch
    NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty of the old saw, “sell in May and go away.” Basically, it is a quick way to remember that the summer half of the year is not often kind to investors.

    With a year’s worth of gains already logged in the first quarter and technical deterioration across the board it does look like the bears are poised to take control.

    Stocks logged one of their best first quarters on record this year but the fun ended when the Federal Reserve took their T-bird away. By hinting that it would no longer flood the market with cheap money — a new round of quantitative easing — it gave the market’s natural forces a chance to reassert themselves. And they did.

    As last month ended, major market indexes had broken down below respective rising trendlines and smaller capitalization indexes were below 50-day moving averages. The bears were back.

    The question is whether May will see downside follow through and the evidence suggests that it will. The tendency of the market to struggle between May and October means the bulls are fighting a long established seasonal battle from a disadvantage.

    The biggest change was found in the Nasdaq where technology issues did a rather abrupt about face. A chart of the index shows a trendline drawn from the November low, excluding one data point in December, was soundly broken to the downside last month . (See chart 1)

    As mentioned earlier, the 50-day average was also broken to the downside. And even more importantly, the relative performance of the Nasdaq (COMP) vs. the broad market as represented by the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) also took a turn for the worse.

    This is significant because the Nasdaq and the tech sector was one of the engines driving the rally all year. The loss of leadership without another group stepping in to take over is not a good sign for the market.

    The question remains, “what do we do about it?” For the average investor, the answer is not going to be a surprise: cash and income.

    Taking a little off the table to reduce risk is always a good idea in troubled times. Economic problems in Europe have returned to the front pages. Superstar stocks such as Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Priceline.com (PCLN) have run into serious trouble on the charts. And again, May is the start of the summertime blues for the market.

    The other part of the plan is to use big dividend yields as a cushion against market weakness. The bond market does not offer much help here with the benchmark U.S. Treasury note yielding about 2% and money market funds yielding virtually nothing after taxes.

    Fortunately, there are stocks with more generous yields, at least more generous relative to other choices. One sector where 4% yields are common is utilities. While the business model has changed from simple power generation to a more diversified mix, relatively high dividend payouts are still common.

    Look for stocks that have stable charts and supporting technicals that lean to the bullish side. For example, Hawaiian Electric Industries (HE) sports a mild corrective decline in 2012 within an overall rising trend from a major 2009 low. (See chart 2)

    It is above both its key 50- and 200-day moving averages and in early April the bears tried. but failed, to take it down. A false breakdown below support as seen in the chart led to an upside breakout a few weeks later. With a nice 4.8% dividend yield, this is a good place to hide from the storm.

    There are other areas of the market offering big dividends but stable charts are a bit problematic. Some have already rallied a good deal and show signs of tiring. Others are actually in decline and capital losses can overwhelm a good dividend.

    The bottom line is that the market is entering the time of year where, to misquote Shakespeare, discretion is the better part of valor. Capital preservation is more important now than capital growth.

    Michael Kahn writes the Getting Technical column for Barron’s Online , which analyzes sectors and markets twice a week. Sign up for a free technical analysis chart of the day at QuickTakesPro .


    Has Apple become the market?
     
    12:01 AM ET 5/1/12 | Marketwatch
     

    I’m not smart. I try to observe. Millions saw the Apple fall but Newton was one who asked, ‘Why?’ — Bernard Baruch, Legendary Investor

    PLAYA DEL REY, Calif. (MarketWatch) — While Sir Isaac Newton was able to achieve a moment of scientific insight regarding the phenomenon of gravity through his visceral observation of the behavior of apples falling from a tree, these days one seeks slightly different insight into the state of today’s stock market by observing the role of Apple, Inc. in the current environment.

    What is observable in this instance is that the direction of Apple stock has had an increasingly greater correlation to the Nasdaq 100 Index (NDX) and by inference, the Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP).

    Today, Apple (AAPL) represents about 17% of the Nasdaq 100, but its effect on the markets seems to have an even greater impact on the direction of the Nasdaq 100. Since major market indices correlate to a high degree, the “Apple effect,” in turn, has a significant influence on the other major market indices and raises the question, “Has Apple become the market?”

    Exactly how big is Apple, and how has its popularity as a mainstay of institutional portfolios affected its influence on the overall market?

    Consider that today, Apple turns over its float every 50 days, while a mere three months ago the trading velocity of Apple was only half that, as it turned its float over every 100 days. When we speak of velocity, we mean the number of shares traded relative to the stock’s float. Apple has a float of 923 million shares and trades 26,086,000 shares a day on average as measured by the 50-day moving average of daily trading volume. This adds up to 1,304,300,000 shares traded over the last 50 days, well in excess of Apple’s 932,000,000 share float. That is an astounding number of shares, even for Apple, and a tremendous amount in terms of dollar value.

    When you talk about Apple, you are talking about a true “big stock,” and this much money moving into and out of Apple, mainly as a result of the activity of institutional investors — mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, etc. — increases the correlative nature of Apple to the overall markets, and thus the overall risk in being exposed to such an environment.

    Apple has been the key leading stock in the current market environment, with mutual funds alone owning about 37% of the stock — over 366 million shares. When funds start to pile out of an over-owned stock, it can create a landslide effect, though it could be argued that 37% is not at extreme levels.

    However, according to the most recent data, big funds like the Fidelity ContraFund or the T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund now own positions in Apple that exceed 10% of their respective funds’ total portfolio values. This is something to take note of, since this implies that Apple has grown to become a truly “over-sized” position within institutional portfolios.

    This, in turn, makes the stock susceptible to institutional investors who are starting to take profits in the stock on the basis of its huge size as a component in their portfolios. The fate of Apple, given its influence on the current market environment, has an exacerbated effect, and any tilting of institutional portfolios away from Apple as it becomes perhaps too large of a component in their respective portfolios will have a correlated effect on the market as a whole.

    Perhaps the greater risk is in markets that are more highly correlative than ever, and this current “one-stock” market is something that is a new circumstance. Thus, Apple’s fate is, to a large extent, representative of the fate of the market, and its ability to please or disappoint investors with new products and new growth can on its own be a catalyst for a new market up leg if viewed positively, or a catalyst for a market correction should it be viewed negatively. As well, Apple’s action can be used as a “mask” for institutional distribution given its correlation to the major market indices.

    Another twist to Apple’s huge influence on the Nasdaq-based indices, and the market as a whole, is that by holding up or supporting Apple stock, institutional investors can stabilize the general market indices during any correction as they sell off other holdings and reduce their exposure to the current market environment. This provides some cover, as institutional investors can count on late-comers to Apple stock seeking to get in on any significant pullback to help provide support for the stock and hence the general market. Thus we find it useful to consider Apple’s action on any given day relative to the general market in order to glean clues about what is going on under the surface.

    In our view, the main aspects of Apple’s influence are twofold, and that is that one, if the stock is now a huge influence in a “one stock market” and institutional investors are loaded up on the stock, how then can we anticipate the direction of the general market based on Apple’s behavior? And two, what clues is it offering in terms of helping us decipher what institutional investors, the true drivers of any market trend, are doing with their portfolios?

    For now our conclusion is that as Apple goes, so goes the market, and investors would be wise to consider Apple as a ready barometer for this current market environment as we move into the third year of a bull market that started off the March 2009 lows. Indeed, two apples that changed the world — Newton’s apple and Jobs’ Apple.

    Gil Morales and Dr. Chris Kacher are both principals and managing directors of MoKa Investors LLC and Virtue of Selfish Investing, LLC.


     

     

    Apple shares retreat, close April in the red

     
    4:20 PM ET 4/30/12 | Marketwatch
     
     

    SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc. shares on Monday fell by $19.02, or more than 3%, to close at $583.98. It was the third-straight day of losses for Apple following what had been big gains following the company’s upbeat quarterly results. For the month of April, Apple’s shares fell 2.6%.

     
    Apple has been volatile over the last 5 days, since the earnings report last Tuesday.  This pullback could have resulted in decent short term investments if I had taken my brother’s advice to purchase deep in-the-money calls.  However, the general indication is that Apple stock is on the decline for the month of April / May 2012. What is a small retail investor like me to do???

April 30, 2012

April 15, 2012

  • Into the blue…

    Time to fly. It’s been a good week to recharge and unplug. I got alot accomplished. It was a good week to distract me from reality. The Allure of the Seas is impressive. More to come. See you on the ground! :)

March 29, 2012

  • AppleWatch: Dividend and Stock Buy Back

    Apple(AAPL) $609.86 Close on 03/29/2012

    So last week Apple declared a dividend. Thanks to Derrick for the info.

    Apple to Offer $2.65 Dividend, Launch Share Buyback
    The Associated Press | March 19, 2012 | 08:39 AM EDT

    Apple is finally using its $98 billion cash hoard to reward shareholders, saying it’s instituting both a dividend and share buyback program.

    Investors’ expectation that Apple would soon declare a dividend has already bolstered the stock of the world’s most valuable company, driving its market capitalization to about $546 billion.

    Apple said Monday that it will pay a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share, starting in its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins July 1.

    The dividend works out to $10.60 annually, or 1.8 percent of the current stock price. That annual yield — how much the company pays out in dividends compared to its stock price — is below that of other big technology companies like Microsoft [ MSFT 32.12  -0.07 (-0.22%) ], currently at 2.5 percent, and Hewlett-Packard [ HPQ 23.51  -0.07 (-0.30%) ], at 2 percent.

    A $10 billion share buyback program will begin next fiscal year, which starts Sept. 30, and run for three years.

    Apple is sitting on $97.6 billion in cash and securities. For years, it has resisted calls to reward shareholders with some of that money. Since the death of CEO Steve Jobs, management has signaled that it’s been considering options for the money.

    Apple has been using cash for its business, for instance by investing in long-term supply contracts for crucial components. Cook said the dividend and buyback won’t prevent it from important investments in the future.

    “These decisions will not close any doors for us,” he told analysts and reporters on a conference call Monday morning.

    The dividend will cost Apple about $10 billion annually. That’s less than the cash the company generates, so its cash levels will continue to grow, but at a slower rate. Apple generated $31 billion in cash in the fiscal year that ended in September.

    Apple shares have risen 37 percent since Oppenheimer said on Jan. 24 that Apple’s board was in “active” discussions about the use of cash.

    On Monday, shares [ AAPL 609.86  -7.76 (-1.26%) ] rose $15.53, or 2.65 percent, to close at $601.10. Just before the announcement, the shares were above $600.

    The dividend opens up ownership of Apple shares to a wider range of funds. Many “value-oriented” funds are not allowed to buy stocks that don’t pay dividends.

    Buybacks are a popular alternative to dividends, since they reduce the number of shares outstanding. That means every remaining investor has title to a larger share of the company.

    Cook said the main point of Apple’s buyback is to offset the shares issued to reward the Cupertino, Calif., company’s employees.

    The dividend and buyback announcement comes three days after the launch of Apple’s latest iPad tablet in the U.S. and nine other countries.

    Apple’s shares are up 45 percent this year after releasing a new iPad last week and announcing blowout iPhone sales in January, but many believe the rally had been in anticipation of a dividend payout.

    —Reuters contributed to this report.


     

    Now, I wonder how many employees will benefit from the $10B buyback?

March 28, 2012

  • Happy Birthday! German Airport Labor Strike

    Germany: Strike by ground staff at airports causes significant disruption to flights across country

    An industrial action on 27 March by the ground staff affiliated to the ver.di public workers’ union resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of domestic and international flights at airports across the country. Around 450 flights were cancelled at Frankfurt Airport ( FRA, Hesse state), while the national carrier Lufthansa cancelled 400 flights on the day. The walkout also affected public sector services, including public transport. Fresh negotiations between the union and the authorities are scheduled for 28-29 March in Potsdam (Brandenburg). The union has threatened an indefinite strike in April if the authorities fail to address its demands and mediations fail. However, the union has stated that aviation strikes will be avoided during Easter holidays.

    Comment and Analysis

    Should negotiations fail to reach a resolution, further strikes and protests by public sector employees could be expected. The widespread impact of recent strikes indicates that disruption to flights, public transport and businesses can be expected in affected states during any strikes. Public transport strike in particular can be expected to cause an increased demand for alternative means of transport, such as taxis and rental vehicles, which could limit their availability. Although any associated demonstrations are likely to pass off peacefully, they may cause localised disruption.

    Ver.di is demanding that the workers’ salaries rise in line with the rate of inflation. The union is demanding a 6.5% increase in salaries, while employers are offering a 3.3% raise. Around 80,000 workers on 21 March observed walkouts over the issue in North Rhine-Westphalia and Berlin. Related strikes have been held in recent days in the states of Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Hesse, Rheinland-Pfalz, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Baden-Württemberg, disrupting public transport in major cities.

    Travel Advice

    Avoid all associated protests as a routine precaution.
    Monitor the local media and our website for further information on the strikes.
     —

    Commentary: wack wack wacky. Entitlement to a 6.6% cost of living adjustment would be nice to count on in perpetuity. This strike hopefully resolves soon.

    On a separate note Apple AAPL trades at $620.