pdq

On Apple, I'm Recommending a Short Position This Week

Apple reports earnings in a couple weeks. With Apple, there is almost always a run-up prior to earnings, and almost always a sell-off afterward.

I wouldn't go short before the run-up. I'd wait until a day or two before earnings. An upside surprise could spoil that strategy too, but it hard for Apple to surprise, since it almost always (lately) beats it's own conservative guidance. And then the stock gets hit when they issue next quarter's conservative guidance.

Buy on run-up, sell _before_ news.

Jonathan Ive: More Valuable to Apple than Steve Jobs?

He's got a bit of a point re: Ives as CEO in this regard- whenever Jobs injects himself into the design process, the result is usually a commercial dud.

The Cube was Jobs' idea. Beautiful, but overpriced, and it sold like crap. He also was heavily involved in the first "new iMac" (the iLamp). It may have been ahead of its time, or perhaps its time will never come. In either case, it lasted for maybe a year before the current iMac design took over and sold well.

Now it may be that Jobs' genius is in product focus, employee motivation, or just his famous Reality Distortion Field. And Ive is probably not a CEO. But it is undeniably true that Apple does better when Jobs doesn't dictate design.

Steve Jobs' Health: A Red Herring

PS- in case you were wondering, the way the apps _get_ to the new phone is the iTunes store get to iPods- through iTunes on a Mac or PC.

Steve Jobs' Health: A Red Herring

Here's that "product transition":

Sometime within the next year (I'd guess at MacWorld in January) Apple will announce the iPhone Mini (or Nano, or whatever you want to call it). It will cost less than the iPhone (I'm guessing $99) and the required contract won't be so heavy, because it won't have G3 (and may not have WiFi). It'll be a straight 2 year ATT voice contract.

This will cannabilize some iPhone sales, (thus the "product transition" with lower margins) but will vastly expand the overall Apple cell phone market.

So why would anyone buy it? It's just another cell phone, right.

It's the apps (and the iPod capabilities and the styling, but it's mostly the apps. By Macworld there will be zillions of them, PIMs, games, etc, and all those that don't require 3G will work just fine for the iPhone Nano.

Now, all of this is pure speculation - I don't claim _any_ inside information - but this is an entirely predictable replay of the iPod model, and the comment about the mysterious "product transition" fits perfectly.

And...it will work. They'll sell 10 million _a quarter_.

I'm hurting now, but I'm long, long, long.

Apple Guidance Can Turn Negative Sentiment on Its Head

<i>"Autsch!! Four times 717.000 makes...let me count....3 million phones a year?"</i>

Ummm....you think sales of the vers. 1.0 iPhone might have been a teensy suppressed by the knowledge that 2.0 was coming imminently?

A lot of people were skeptical about the 10 mil iPhones by the end of 2008, but they're going to blow past that with the new one.

Yahoo, Microsoft: Either Make Nice or Lose Big

I disagree, at least with regard to the Microsoft offer. Yahoo has several viable options, and Microsoft only one- MS wants and needs a top-notch search engine to hold off Google. Which is to say, Microsoft needs Yahoo more than Yahoo needs Microsoft.

If Ballmer hadn't been so cheap and clumsy with the original deal (ultimatums and the like), they probably could have reached a agreement. Now, it's going to be a mess.

IndyMac Bancorp Failure: Sen. Schumer vs. OTS

Oh, puhleeze! IMB's deep problems were apparent to everyone with a pulse. Do I have to point out that IMB's share price had dropped-steadily- 98+% in the two years _before_ Schumer's letter? And that Shumer's...ummm... on the Senate finance and Banking committees, and so might legitimately discuss such matters? It sounds like his concerns about taxpayers getting stuck with the tab were sure legitimate!

These financial institutions like IMB that went hog-wild for the big mortgage bucks when times were good are all a house of cards these days, and everybody knows it. Blaming Schumer for acknowledging the obvious is just shooting the messenger.