Apple Reports Record 1Q 2022 Results: $34.6B Profit on $123.9B Revenue

[BuddyTronic]

Sure.

I think I paid $11.00 on one AAPL buy. Maybe it was just before or at the time of the iMac release.

I actually bought apple shares back in like 1993

Here is one from 2002 that I snapped when I was cleaning out my office several years ago.

I'll have to look for the original stack of those and post more! I love bragging!View attachment 1950630

I think I bought those shares right after an argument with my number one guy at the office who was making some stupid argument about his Creative Labs MP3 player being better than the iPod. Lol. Sweet revenge

 

[BuddyTronic]

Exactly right, you never want to have all of your money tied up in just one stock.

My IRA portfolio is pretty diversified- 70% in S&P 500 index funds with the remaining money that I dabble in individual stocks

Apple is just one of many stocks that I own but yes, I have a lot of confidence in the company and have no intentions of selling it anytime soon. Especially under the leadership of Tim Cook.

How did diversification serve you during the Covid Covid market crash in February March 2020 or the one just two weeks ago?

I’m curious.

Diversification is ______

 

[DeepIn2U]

I bought a lot of Apple stock in my IRA a few years ago and continue buying more on the dips

I’m definitely planning to keep adding more shares and am holding it as a long-term investment

Apple’s future looks bright when considering their now industry leading chips and an Apple Car on the horizon so I’m really looking forward to their upcoming products as both an investor and a huge fan

From what I’ve been reading lately, 2022 is gearing up to be another blockbuster year for Apple so I’m really looking forward to it!

oooh yeah!

Investors be like ... C'Mon 'N Ride It !!

WoooWoooooo!

 

[ignatius345]

The joke of me getting a fully loaded MacBook Pro M1 with 4TB SSD - just to watch funny cat videos and surf the web is pretty much the truth.

Some people definitely need to do more than that, both with their iPads and with Macs.

And presenting a $4K laptop as an alternative to an iPad is a false dilemma, right? The real choice is for a lot of people is, say, a $1000 M1 MacBook Air versus a $1000 iPad Pro. I suspect that for a fair number of people the laptop form factor is familiar and easy, and MacOS offers a very capable platform, with an actual file-management system and much easier multi-tasking.

 

[BuddyTronic]

oooh yeah!

Investors be like ... C'Mon 'N Ride It !!

WoooWoooooo!

WhoooooWoooooo!

Yeah

 

[Flight Plan]

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for a reality check.

No really!

...Apple products sell themselves, so there’s no issue there...

Right now they do. But EVERY major winner in the past has gone through its own lifecycle of "heyday rising", and eventually reaches the pinnacle, whatever that pinnacle may be for THAT company and its stock.

Just like no human has ever lived forever, no stock will keep going up forever.

I do think services is the area they could see more growth, and they’re expanding, but I think when you have more consumers involved in services, it integrates them even more into the product line and in the household.

I'll say you're right on this. It will keep working until it doesn't. And it may be possible that the cracks are beginning to form. The economy is NOT healthy. The Fed is NOT healthy. Inflation is rising rapidly. Whether or not inflation is the cause (it could be), the consumer is slowing down spending. This was evident in December.

When we say "services", that usually means subscriptions.

Companies LOVE LOVE LOVE them some subscriptions, yes they do! Subscriptions may very well be the modern-day "crutch business model"; the thing you go to when you don't know how to make money any other way.

And subscription money is easy money! Until it isn't. Because eventually, once "everybody is a subscriber", you can't grow the business anymore. And then, the only thing for people to do is to get out. And although they get out for a wide range of reasons, it will happen and it will hurt the stock price.

Very impressive under normal conditions, but given supply and delivery constraints, it’s amazing.

Yes, it is amazing. But eventually, the grim reaper gets 'em all.

Pricing is usually more an indicator of what the market will bear, and less a formulaic “sum up the price of components and add a 30% margin”. Else, there would be no market for luxury goods like Hermes.

In short, what this means is that the price of something like the MBA represents its value to the consumer, and that the price has remained constant works because after more than a year, we still don’t really have a noteworthy contender to the M1 chip in terms of the benefits that it brings.

What this goes to show is that despite Apple’s pricing, sufficient people find enough value in their products to buy them over supposed cheaper alternatives. Which I feel goes back to my oft-mentioned mantra about how Apple products tend to cost more upfront, but they quickly pay for themselves in the form of greater productivity and fewer problems overall.

Fight it, deny it, rant against it. Apple will continue to prosper all the same.

You were 100% correct right up to your last sentence, "Apple will continue to prosper all the same." To say it accurately, "Apple will continue to prosper until it doesn't."

Every company, and I mean EVERY company eventually falls out of favor. Remember Enron? In earlier times, there was Marathon and US Steel, K-Mart, Sears, and before them, Kresge! There was a time when General Motors was the king of automobiles and the king of the stock market. It could do no wrong, and neither could General Electric! GM hasn't been a king of even an ant hill for 50-60 years; maybe more.

There was a time when IBM was king. There was even a saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (equipment)." And it was all true. Well, at least until this new upstart Microsoft came along.

And there was Sun, and Oracle, and a company called Visx, who could do laser surgery on your corneas and free you from wearing glasses and contacts, and Cree, who made LED technology, and AmGen, who had a patent lock on some amazing blood or cancer treatments or some such.

All of these greats are now best described as "Former Greats".

Somebody will eventually come along and tip over even Apple's .. um, "applecart". Hey, that one was too juicy to pass up!

But tongue-in-cheek humor or not, my point is correct.

Market sets pricing and results are in! People are good with the prices!

Until they're not.

Is the M1 Mac better than prior Macs?

Yes, the M1 chip runs cooler than anything currently from Intel or AMD.

Just to play devil's advocate (or somebody who makes their living via the financial markets), it could be a good idea to think about diversifying your holdings. I have no idea, obviously, what your investment time frame is but say, for discussion purposes, you plan to retire in 30 years.

Everybody should listen to KaliYoni. He/she is 100% correct.

Now look at the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1991 vs. 2020:

Historical components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So, as the cliché goes, you should keep riding your winner trade (AAPL). But having a highly concentrated portfolio or retirement account can lead to lots of volatility, or worse.

The "or worse" part includes losing only 10% of your holdings, but it also includes the possibility of losing 90%

It’s all about Services in the Ecosystem. Look at the continuing growth in the curve. Despite all the haters Apple just keeps on rolling.

Every gravy train must eventually pull into the station.

Time to focus on other things like next weeks WX Forecast.

I don't know what this means.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Ladies and Gentlemen, it's time for a reality check.

No really!


Right now they do. But EVERY major winner in the past has gone through its own lifecycle of "heyday rising", and eventually reaches the pinnacle, whatever that pinnacle may be for THAT company and its stock.

Just like no human has ever lived forever, no stock will keep going up forever.

I'll say you're right on this. It will keep working until it doesn't. And it may be possible that the cracks are beginning to form. The economy is NOT healthy. The Fed is NOT healthy. Inflation is rising rapidly. Whether or not inflation is the cause (it could be), the consumer is slowing down spending. This was evident in December.

When we say "services", that usually means subscriptions.

Companies LOVE LOVE LOVE them some subscriptions, yes they do! Subscriptions may very well be the modern-day "crutch business model"; the thing you go to when you don't know how to make money any other way.

And subscription money is easy money! Until it isn't. Because eventually, once "everybody is a subscriber", you can't grow the business anymore. And then, the only thing for people to do is to get out. And although they get out for a wide range of reasons, it will happen and it will hurt the stock price.

Yes, it is amazing. But eventually, the grim reaper gets 'em all.

You were 100% correct right up to your last sentence, "Apple will continue to prosper all the same." To say it accurately, "Apple will continue to prosper until it doesn't."

Every company, and I mean EVERY company eventually falls out of favor. Remember Enron? In earlier times, there was Marathon and US Steel, K-Mart, Sears, and before them, Kresge! There was a time when General Motors was the king of automobiles and the king of the stock market. It could do no wrong, and neither could General Electric! GM hasn't been a king of even an ant hill for 50-60 years; maybe more.

There was a time when IBM was king. There was even a saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (equipment)." And it was all true. Well, at least until this new upstart Microsoft came along.

And there was Sun, and Oracle, and a company called Visx, who could do laser surgery on your corneas and free you from wearing glasses and contacts, and Cree, who made LED technology, and AmGen, who had a patent lock on some amazing blood or cancer treatments or some such.

All of these greats are now best described as "Former Greats".

Somebody will eventually come along and tip over even Apple's .. um, "applecart". Hey, that one was too juicy to pass up!

But tongue-in-cheek humor or not, my point is correct.

Until they're not.

Yes, the M1 chip runs cooler than anything currently from Intel or AMD.

Everybody should listen to KaliYoni. He/she is 100% correct.

The "or worse" part includes losing only 10% of your holdings, but it also includes the possibility of losing 90%

Every gravy train must eventually pull into the station.

I don't know what this means.

The story has not changed For Apple.

If anything the future is brighter for Apple.

I hear your point about nothing lasts forever, so check back in a couple of years and see if the story has changed for Apple.

Were you anticipating or have you been anticipating every single year for the last 20 years that Apple’s future is not good?

Did you come up with this now? Like just now? Or have you had this idea about the end of Apple for a long time? Been right?

What reality check are you really referring to?

 

[Flight Plan]

You should have perhaps sold your shares at Christmas. Despite the great sales figures, the stock market (including Apple) has been dropping like a stone recently . Rocky times ahead.

The stock market is indeed in a bear market. How deep it will go is anybody's guess.

The stock market also has another thing going on that's got me very concerned. That is that the indexes are over-weighted to the biggest names out there. Allow me to peel this onion back a layer for folks:

In the US stock market, there are about 9,000 stocks out there, with 7,000 on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges together. Those two trading exchanges are the most familiar to US investors.

We have just a few companies that are SO BIG, they comprise the majority of the main indexes, and of the thing that the media calls "the market". What does this mean? The stock market could have a big majority, say 6500 stocks, have a bad day (go down significantly). But 500 are flat or go up some. And the media calls it a good day because the market indexes are all up. Wait a minute...how can this be?

Up because Apple and Amazon had a good day. Or because Amazon and Google had a good day. When the advance/decline ratio doesn't agree with the major market indexes, then you have a divergence that makes it very difficult for an everyday investor to really know the true condition of the market, and even harder for him or her to actually be successful in it.

And that's key information! The market is sick right now. It might even have its own version of Covid! And that puts almost everything at risk for losing suddenly and quickly.

People will get mad at you for suggesting that their favorite stock will not go up forever. Even if we never had a bear market, this would still happen because nobody and no company does everything right for ever and ever.

I've even been called "anti-American" for saying that certain stocks (or the whole market) is a bubble. But we WERE in a bubble, maybe even since 2020. And now we're in a correction. A correction that is deep enough to call it a "bear market". Bear markets can last for a few weeks, a couple months, or even for several YEARS. If bad enough, it will get 'em all, and there are no stocks strong enough to resist forever.

Stop investing? No. But do be careful. Don't take even more risk while we're in a bear market, because that will be your downfall. Remember Enron? The company kept pushing and pushing its stock even to its employees. But when we all learned that it was a sham operation, you couldn't sell your shares fast enough to avoid losing your @ss!

I cannot stress this strongly enough. Protect your capital. If your investments fall 7%, then you need to gain only about 7.5% to break even. If your working capital falls by 25%, then you need to gain about 33% to break even. And OMG, if your investments fall by 50%, then you need to gain 100% in order to break even.

And then there are the "true believers", who won't cut their losses come hell or high water. It's even worse when they won't stop using margin (which is a form of "borrowing stock"). These were people who lost 80-90%, and in some cases, lost more than they had, including their personal assets (that can happen with margin investing). I have friends who did that in 2000 and again in 2008. Once the smoke cleared, they had almost nothing left. The only thing they really could do was say they were now a "long term buy-and-hold investor", start ignoring their investments (because now it brought them so much sadness), and just go sit in front of the teevee and start watching sports. Or maybe join a church or start getting counseling so that they wouldn't be motivated to end their lives.

Don't let that happen to you. Protect your capital.

 

[Flight Plan]

The story has not changed For Apple.

Yet. Nothing lasts forever. I said that and you acknowledged it. And then you reneged on that acknowledgement. Whatever.

If anything the future is brighter for Apple.

The economy is sick. The market is sick. We have hundreds of ships not able to get their products offloaded. We have mental illness being forced upon our children and we have criminals roaming the streets. We have politicians who spend like drunken..well, politicians. Our education system creates a workforce with a high percentage of people not qualified to do the work that they might want to do.

Right now, no single company is stronger than all of the stuff happening. Without security, economic activity cannot happen. Without education, research and development will be less effective, and maybe even be abandoned. Without R&D, new new product pipelines will dry up. The mandates are creating a sub-society of servants to the elites, and that makes it very difficult for anybody to conduct business freely, openly, equally, and gainfully.

I hear your point about nothing lasts forever, so check back in a couple of years and see if the story has changed for Apple.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not predicting a downfall for Apple. I'm just giving good advice. You can take it or leave it. You're going to do what you're going to do anyway, so I wouldn't waste my time trying to convince you even of the color of the sky. But you're not the only one here, and I'm just sharing with anybody who might benefit.

Were you anticipating or have you been anticipating every single year for the last 20 years that Apple’s future is not good?

You're being ridiculous now. Just because I make a caution, you accuse me of being like that? I must have gotten under your skin though, because you went right to accusations. And I'm just a guy on the internet. ?

We all just need to temper our excitement with good sense. The neat thing is, you don't have to follow my idea of good sense. You can make up your own idea of good sense!

I don't "need" to be right. But I am. ? This is just about managing risk. Buying more stock in a bad market is like parking your car on the railroad tracks thinking that it will stop the train, or that the train will stop when the engineer sees your car, or that God will intervene and save the day.

The market is orders-of-magnitude of orders-of-magnitude bigger than you and me. That's part of the risk. You have to cross the tracks, yes. But don't cross them when a train is coming. Oh and yeah, I'm pretty sure a train is coming. ?

If you disregard anyway, might it still pay off? Oh sure. But the people who get hurt the worst are often the ones who haven't yet been hurt bad by their prior decisions.

Did you come up with this now? Like just now? Or have you had this idea about the end of Apple for a long time? Been right?

Mocking me is silly, and makes you look defensive. I didn't say or claim anything about "the end of Apple". I'm just giving good advice to be careful, manage risk, and protect capital.

What reality check are you really referring to?

Very defensive. Okay, I'll explain anyway.

There's a percentage of those who get hurt the worst in investing that end up with nothing to retire on. Many have committed suicide as a result. Some have lost their homes and families. If you lose big while early in your working career, then you still have working time ample enough to overcome it, assuming that going forward you stay in the workforce, continue contributing regularly, have a market going in the right direction most of the time, and make better decisions on balance.

But if you're in your 50s or 60s, you may not have the time to recover from a hot mess of your own making. So keep a level head, stay diversified and use common sense.

You don't HAVE to listen to me, but I figured that was assumed. If you're feeling defensive, then maybe you're just one of those humans who just need to touch the burner to know the stove is hot. I get that and I'm okay with it. But to go arguing that I hate Apple, that I'm waiting for 20 years for Apple to fail? Or that I hate people who make money in investing? That's silly, and some folks here will know that I'm an excited user of the iPhone, Apple Watch, and (coming in February), my first Mac!

Maybe it could be that you're trying, consciously or sub-consciously, to cloud my message so that others will dismiss it out of hand. But I get that too. I'm not so naive that I would think SOMEBODY wouldn't take offense at my advice.

Froth is one of the key indicators of a bubble. I've seen it all my investing life, so I can recognize it when I see words like "will always keep going up" or "will never go down".

Until I posted, this thread was as frothy as the milk in a Cappuccino, as bubbly as Yay's bubblebath, as foamy as a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, as air-filled as my morning shaving mug! So yeah, a reality check was needed. Hmmm, maybe I'll go make some coffee. Who's with me, I've got some great Kona beans here! ?

 

[Flight Plan]

...betting big on something you have an edge on is far better...

Well, some "edges" will get you sent to the GreyBar Motel. And while Martha Stewart seems to have come out of her ordeal okay, I don't trade in ANYTHING that I might be accused of having inside knowledge on, like a work relationship for example.

So yeah, there are maybe 30 or 40 companies that I won't trade stock in. I like my freedom and I like not having to work out in an open yard like a free-range chicken, fold other people's laundry, pick up litter from the side of the freeway on 90 degree days, sleep with one eye open, or pee in a steel bowl.

 

[BuddyTronic]

The stock market is indeed in a bear market. How deep it will go is anybody's guess.

The stock market also has another thing going on that's got me very concerned. That is that the indexes are over-weighted to the biggest names out there. Allow me to peel this onion back a layer for folks:

In the US stock market, there are about 9,000 stocks out there, with 7,000 on the NASDAQ and NYSE exchanges together. Those two trading exchanges are the most familiar to US investors.

We have just a few companies that are SO BIG, they comprise the majority of the main indexes, and of the thing that the media calls "the market". What does this mean? The stock market could have a big majority, say 6500 stocks, have a bad day (go down significantly). But 500 are flat or go up some. And the media calls it a good day because the market indexes are all up. Wait a minute...how can this be?

Up because Apple and Amazon had a good day. Or because Amazon and Google had a good day. When the advance/decline ratio doesn't agree with the major market indexes, then you have a divergence that makes it very difficult for an everyday investor to really know the true condition of the market, and even harder for him or her to actually be successful in it.

And that's key information! The market is sick right now. It might even have its own version of Covid! And that puts almost everything at risk for losing suddenly and quickly.

People will get mad at you for suggesting that their favorite stock will not go up forever. Even if we never had a bear market, this would still happen because nobody and no company does everything right for ever and ever.

I've even been called "anti-American" for saying that certain stocks (or the whole market) is a bubble. But we WERE in a bubble, maybe even since 2020. And now we're in a correction. A correction that is deep enough to call it a "bear market". Bear markets can last for a few weeks, a couple months, or even for several YEARS. If bad enough, it will get 'em all, and there are no stocks strong enough to resist forever.

Stop investing? No. But do be careful. Don't take even more risk while we're in a bear market, because that will be your downfall. Remember Enron? The company kept pushing and pushing its stock even to its employees. But when we all learned that it was a sham operation, you couldn't sell your shares fast enough to avoid losing your @ss!

I cannot stress this strongly enough. Protect your capital. If your investments fall 7%, then you need to gain only about 7.5% to break even. If your working capital falls by 25%, then you need to gain about 33% to break even. And OMG, if your investments fall by 50%, then you need to gain 100% in order to break even.

And then there are the "true believers", who won't cut their losses come hell or high water. It's even worse when they won't stop using margin (which is a form of "borrowing stock"). These were people who lost 80-90%, and in some cases, lost more than they had, including their personal assets (that can happen with margin investing). I have friends who did that in 2000 and again in 2008. Once the smoke cleared, they had almost nothing left. The only thing they really could do was say they were now a "long term buy-and-hold investor", start ignoring their investments (because now it brought them so much sadness), and just go sit in front of the teevee and start watching sports. Or maybe join a church or start getting counseling so that they wouldn't be motivated to end their lives.

Don't let that happen to you. Protect your capital.

Yet. Nothing lasts forever. I said that and you acknowledged it. And then you reneged on that acknowledgement. Whatever.

The economy is sick. The market is sick. We have hundreds of ships not able to get their products offloaded. We have mental illness being forced upon our children and we have criminals roaming the streets. We have politicians who spend like drunken..well, politicians. Our education system creates a workforce with a high percentage of people not qualified to do the work that they might want to do.

Right now, no single company is stronger than all of the stuff happening. Without security, economic activity cannot happen. Without education, research and development will be less effective, and maybe even be abandoned. Without R&D, new new product pipelines will dry up. The mandates are creating a sub-society of servants to the elites, and that makes it very difficult for anybody to conduct business freely, openly, equally, and gainfully.

I'm not going to do that. I'm not predicting a downfall for Apple. I'm just giving good advice. You can take it or leave it. You're going to do what you're going to do anyway, so I wouldn't waste my time trying to convince you even of the color of the sky. But you're not the only one here, and I'm just sharing with anybody who might benefit.

You're being ridiculous now. Just because I make a caution, you accuse me of being like that? I must have gotten under your skin though, because you went right to accusations. And I'm just a guy on the internet. ?

We all just need to temper our excitement with good sense. The neat thing is, you don't have to follow my idea of good sense. You can make up your own idea of good sense!

I don't "need" to be right. But I am. ? This is just about managing risk. Buying more stock in a bad market is like parking your car on the railroad tracks thinking that it will stop the train, or that the train will stop when the engineer sees your car, or that God will intervene and save the day.

The market is orders-of-magnitude of orders-of-magnitude bigger than you and me. That's part of the risk. You have to cross the tracks, yes. But don't cross them when a train is coming. Oh and yeah, I'm pretty sure a train is coming. ?

If you disregard anyway, might it still pay off? Oh sure. But the people who get hurt the worst are often the ones who haven't yet been hurt bad by their prior decisions.

Mocking me is silly, and makes you look defensive. I didn't say or claim anything about "the end of Apple". I'm just giving good advice to be careful, manage risk, and protect capital.

Very defensive. Okay, I'll explain anyway.

There's a percentage of those who get hurt the worst in investing that end up with nothing to retire on. Many have committed suicide as a result. Some have lost their homes and families. If you lose big while early in your working career, then you still have working time ample enough to overcome it, assuming that going forward you stay in the workforce, continue contributing regularly, have a market going in the right direction most of the time, and make better decisions on balance.

But if you're in your 50s or 60s, you may not have the time to recover from a hot mess of your own making. So keep a level head, stay diversified and use common sense.

You don't HAVE to listen to me, but I figured that was assumed. If you're feeling defensive, then maybe you're just one of those humans who just need to touch the burner to know the stove is hot. I get that and I'm okay with it. But to go arguing that I hate Apple, that I'm waiting for 20 years for Apple to fail? Or that I hate people who make money in investing? That's silly, and some folks here will know that I'm an excited user of the iPhone, Apple Watch, and (coming in February), my first Mac!

Maybe it could be that you're trying, consciously or sub-consciously, to cloud my message so that others will dismiss it out of hand. But I get that too. I'm not so naive that I would think SOMEBODY wouldn't take offense at my advice.

Froth is one of the key indicators of a bubble. I've seen it all my investing life, so I can recognize it when I see words like "will always keep going up" or "will never go down".

Until I posted, this thread was as frothy as the milk in a Cappuccino, as bubbly as Yay's bubblebath, as foamy as a beach on the Gulf of Mexico, as air-filled as my morning shaving mug! So yeah, a reality check was needed. Hmmm, maybe I'll go make some coffee. Who's with me, I've got some great Kona beans here! ?

Gosh. I disagree with almost everything you say

Oh well.

Get on the AAPL train - it’s leaving the station!

WooooooooWoooo!
I think I can. I think I can. I think I can
Woooooo Wooooo!

 

[TallManNY]

How did diversification serve you during the Covid Covid market crash in February March 2020 or the one just two weeks ago?

I’m curious.

Diversification is ______

If you didn't sell during the Covid market crash, then that was a blip on the road to new record highs. If you did sell, then you might want to re-think your investment strategy and if you should be a stock market investor at all. Historically speaking, you basically only have to do one thing right, don't panic sell during a crash. If you aren't emotionally capable of riding through market crashes, then you are really going to struggle using the stock market as a major vehicle for your investment strategy.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

And presenting a $4K laptop as an alternative to an iPad is a false dilemma, right? The real choice is for a lot of people is, say, a $1000 M1 MacBook Air versus a $1000 iPad Pro. I suspect that for a fair number of people the laptop form factor is familiar and easy, and MacOS offers a very capable platform, with an actual file-management system and much easier multi-tasking.

I’d say the choice would be more between a $1000 M1 MacBook Air versus a $329 iPad. Because, for what most people do (check emails, surf the web, check social media, ummm, did I say check emails?), the iPad more than fills that need. For those that need more than an iPad, the answer is almost always to NOT get an iPad (whether it’s macOS or something else is the bigger question). The only folks getting a $1000 iPad Pro are those that decidedly aren’t interested in macOS because macOS doesn’t offer what they want.

For folks whose first computing device was a Mac, it makes sense that they’re comfortable with that way of working. But, for folks whose first computing device was some touch device like an iPhone an Android (or an older relative’s hand me down tablet) the iPad is always going to be more familiar. Just a few days ago, a friend’s kid was trying to zoom in on their school supplied Chromebook and was wondering why the screen didn’t respond. These folks will care little about extensive file-management (as long as they can save and retrieve a file, they’re fine) and are comfortable with the level of multi-tasking that’s available. This is the future that Apple’s skating to with unit sales eclipsing Mac unit sales even when iPad revenue is lower than the Mac (because iPads on average sell for less than Macs).

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

iPad sales stopped to improve, again. That is not a good sign!

iPadOS sux. Who'd buy one? Too big to fit in your pocket, and too useless an OS to really make use of.

Meanwhile M1 in Macs and the other hardware fixes they've been bundled with, has revolutionised Mac sales. And iPhone sales continue to dominate.

iPads could maybe sell more if the anti-trust cases end up forcing Apple to allow sideloading. At which point Apple might decide to open up iPadOS and make it actually useful, but I doubt it. But even then, to do real work you need a real keyboard, and then you may as well just have a MBP/MBA, as they are lighter and better than an iPad Pro w keyboard (and the MBA is cheaper).

 

[BuddyTronic]

If you didn't sell during the Covid market crash, then that was a blip on the road to new record highs. If you did sell, then you might want to re-think your investment strategy and if you should be a stock market investor at all. Historically speaking, you basically only have to do one thing right, don't panic sell during a crash. If you aren't emotionally capable of riding through market crashes, then you are really going to struggle using the stock market as a major vehicle for your investment strategy.

Well that's something, but is it "diversification" ? No.

It's telling me what happens if you panic sell vs hold on. You are not speaking to the question - what is the benefit of diversification? Try again.

 

[sideshowuniqueuser]

Wow. Mac made more than iPad!

Well that is to be expected cause M1 Macs are good.

Macs have always been making more than iPads except for the brief period of 2012-2014, in which case iPad was new and exciting (and still cheapish). Then the excitement died off as everyone realised the vast limitations of iPadOS and lack of real keyboard, and sales dropped back to reflect their true toy status.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Macs have always been making more than iPads except for the brief period of 2012-2014, in which case iPad was new and exciting (and still cheapish). Then the excitement died off as everyone realised the vast limitations of iPadOS and lack of real keyboard, and sales dropped back to reflect their true toy status.

Macs have always made more because they’re more expensive. But, there are more iPads in folks’ hands year after year than Macs (in 2020, 70+ million iPads versus just over 20 million Macs).

 

[Abazigal]

You were 100% correct right up to your last sentence, "Apple will continue to prosper all the same." To say it accurately, "Apple will continue to prosper until it doesn't."

Every company, and I mean EVERY company eventually falls out of favor. Remember Enron? In earlier times, there was Marathon and US Steel, K-Mart, Sears, and before them, Kresge! There was a time when General Motors was the king of automobiles and the king of the stock market. It could do no wrong, and neither could General Electric! GM hasn't been a king of even an ant hill for 50-60 years; maybe more.

There was a time when IBM was king. There was even a saying, "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM (equipment)." And it was all true. Well, at least until this new upstart Microsoft came along.

And there was Sun, and Oracle, and a company called Visx, who could do laser surgery on your corneas and free you from wearing glasses and contacts, and Cree, who made LED technology, and AmGen, who had a patent lock on some amazing blood or cancer treatments or some such.

All of these greats are now best described as "Former Greats".

Somebody will eventually come along and tip over even Apple's .. um, "applecart". Hey, that one was too juicy to pass up!

But tongue-in-cheek humor or not, my point is correct.

Until they're not.

I guess that in the greater scheme of things, nothing lasts forever. Not the universe, not Rome, nor will Apple.

However, what has truly and really irritated me over the last decade is this:

If people wish to demonstrate that they know the reason why Apple will (one day) fail, should they not at least first demonstrate that they also understand the reason why Apple grew, and how they grew to be the massive juggernaut they are today? Instead, what I saw was year after year of people proclaiming how Apple was doomed because of something they weren’t doing or doing differently from the rest of the industry (eg: not acquiring netflix, or entering the smart speaker market, or selling cheap phones). Instead, Apple went on to do the exact opposite, and went on to prosper for it.

For example, smart speakers have not become the new computing paradigm that pundits claimed, mainly because this claim was borne more of a desire to find something new that Apple wasn’t already involved in and publish clickbait, which in turn impacted their ability to analyse this objectively.

More expensive iPhones belie the fact that reselling older iPhones serve to both lower the cost of buying a new phone, while also growing the iphone install base by way of the gray market. And Apple doesn’t do acquisitions for the sake of users or market share for obvious reasons. Even Spotify’s Joe Rogan acquisition is starting to backfire.

And my reasoning as to why I believe Apple will continue to prosper for a good long time comes down to this article.

Above Avalon: Apple Is Pulling Away From the Competition

For the second year in a row, Apple held a developers conference that should frighten its competitors. Relying on a nearly maniacal obsession with the user experience, Apple is removing oxygen from every market that it plays in. At the same time, the tech landscape is riddled with increasingly bad b

www.aboveavalon.com

1) Apple’s install base continues to grow
2) Their ecosystem strengthens by the day
3) The competition is imploding
4) I doubt regulation will have as much of an impact as the headlines make it out to be
5) I believe wearables will have a far greater impact than folding phones
6) Apple sells an experience, not a product. So long as people keep fixating on any one aspect in a vacuum, like iphone sales, they will read Apple wrong every time.

We need to stop comparing Apple to the competition in terms of what Apple is / isn’t doing. Rather, I choose to begin with Apple, and then I look outwards at different industries.

Instead, what I see a lot of people still do today is that they just treat Apple as any other company. But Apple does a lot of things differently, and if all you are doing is simply comparing Apple to everyone else and then go “Hey, Apple isn’t following what everyone else is doing, so I don’t think whatever Apple is doing is going to work”, I think they go down the wrong path.

And gone down the wrong path many have.

 

[TallManNY]

Well that's something, but is it "diversification" ? No.

It's telling me what happens if you panic sell vs hold on. You are not speaking to the question - what is the benefit of diversification? Try again.

Diversification gives you risk and variance reduction. A diversified investment portfolio is more likely to perform closer to historical averages. A focused investment portfolio could do much better or do much worse than historical averages.

 

[BuddyTronic]

Diversification gives you risk and variance reduction. A diversified investment portfolio is more likely to perform closer to historical averages. A focused investment portfolio could do much better or do much worse than historical averages.

Yes - well stated.

This explanation/definition refers to “averages”. Like the Dow or s&p500 performance averages over time of many years.

If you have strong belief or conviction that a company is perhaps the best company, the very best company for most of your life, why on earth would you dilute the focus of your investment with anything else? I felt this way since I convinced my dad to buy us an Apple IIe in like 1981. I saw Microsoft copycat Apple. I thought Newton was cool.

I bought AAPL through the mid 1990’s to present day. For the last 25 years I have been 98% or 92% AAPL. For several years Apple has been the biggest and bestest company now. Today on CNBC options activity 2 of the 3 guys talked about Phillip Morris stock! What the heck? I beat Warren Buffet ( by percentages) just by buying and holding Apple. For the last 14 years I’ve added call options to my repertoire. It’s gone very well for me, but I truly wonder why everyone doesn’t or hasn’t invested in AAPL over this time. To me it was obvious, and I scoff at hedge funds that try to beat the S&P by 1% at the end of the year. How can people doubt Apple?

“All your eggs in one basket?” I’d also scoff at that because I was 10 or 20x by 1999.

IMac. Bought lots.

iPod - bought lots.

Intel inside 2006 June 6 - I bought lots

January iPhone show 2007 - I bought lots

Nothing much else really. A few other tech stocks like INTC. ADBE. MACR. MOT. That all got dwarfed by AAPL value growth.

Anyway- When Cramer popularized the “are you diversified?” I’d be like - why?

The market crashes I’ve lived through - diversification wouldn’t help much. I bought what I knew about. What I believed in.

 

[DeepIn2U]

iPad sales stopped to improve, again. That is not a good sign!

Well a few possible reasons:
- Some felt stung upgrading 11" 2018 with A12X to 2019's A12Z,
- Some already upgraded to 11/12.9" 2021 M1 iPad Pro's.
- iPad Air 4 was a long wait - should've came in 2020 after 2018 iPad Pro 11". That would mean Air 5 would've helped sales.

- iPad is just too cheap for high margins but retail price is good BUT could be better. Keep the 64GB option and add 128GB option between the 256GB. iPad Air 128GB/256GB/512GB.
- iPad Pro's should start at 256GB then go up keep the higher 512GB/1TB/2TB options.
>> 64GB limits profits and keeps 2d6GB too expensive since its not a storage standard.

 

[nylonsteel]

aapl gets nice pricw bump - too bad we're in bear market trend - stock price would be alot better if markets were more bullish - but im not complaining - aapl stock privce bump up to 170 on 1-28-22 - comes at a good time vs most of the market - future price action - who knows - no one can foresee the future

 

[BuddyTronic]

aapl gets nice pricw bump - too bad we're in bear market trend - stock price would be alot better if markets were more bullish - but im not complaining - aapl stock privce bump up to 170 on 1-28-22 - comes at a good time vs most of the market - future price action - who knows - no one can foresee the future

You can bet on the future though.

July 175 calls are up more than 35% in 2 days. That wasn’t so hard to prognosticate

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Well a few possible reasons:

They actually gave the reason, that there were constraints on supplies in the quarter that should be resolved by March.

 

[Flight Plan]

Gosh. I disagree with almost everything you say

That's okay! It doesn't mean that I'm wrong though.

One of my work friends does say that if he had listened to me in early 2000, he would not have lost (what I think was a couple million; virtually all of his non-retirement savings and possibly a large portion of his retirement nest egg too) during the dot-com market crash of 2000 and the bear market that went at least through 2003. You may remember the early signs the market was flashing in March, and then early April when the market began its correction. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ indexes were tough birds,though. They had declined but not rolled over until September and December, if memory serves, 6-8 months after it had all begun!

My buddy was heavily leveraged in tech stocks, many of which had little to no earnings (earnings, not revenue) to report (with many that had NEVER reported a profit all the way back to their IPO!), and all I had said to him was "I know you have a lot of little tech stocks with no earnings. You might want to reconsider that strategy." We all saw the correction beginning, but nobody thought the market would suffer a 30-40% decline by September. The NASDAQ's 80% decline was freakish!

When my friend's margin call came (or when he learned of it; not sure which), it was like getting a gut-punch right in the middle of a high volume down day that was heading downward fast with every passing minute.

Per the rules of his margin account, he had a limited amount of time (if it's an Exchange margin call, you get 2 days. If it's a brokerage margin call, you might have only the current day) to raise cash in his account, and everything, being down markedly, wasn't selling for much. I remember asking him a few weeks later if he was able to meet the call and he didn't answer me. All he said was he was going back to church and watching sports more. I later read something about that very phenomenon.

He went into his shell for a few years, but today he'll tell the story as a lesson learned the hard way.

The NASDAQ index would end up declining 80% by December 2002, and it took even longer to recover from those lows. Many of the huge names from back then are no longer in existence. Maybe their Intellectual Property still exists and is owned by another company now, but I don't know what happened to their pension plans. That downturn changed the landscape of investing as we know it. Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, just a few of the big names back then, all lost huge and took a very long time to recover.

For you and me, we had a lot of time left to work and invest. But if you were a person who retired in 2000, 2001, or 2002? You might very well have had to go back to work all over again just to put food on the table. Just six months ago, you were excited to tell off your toxic boss at your toxic company, retire, stop driving every day through rush hour traffic, and start hitting the links or going on ski trips in Telluride. Now just 6 months later, you're taking a crap job because what you THOUGHT you had for retirement has just vaporized!

Here's why this is so important to me. If you're here on MacRumors, I consider you a friend. I don't want that to happen to friends.