Right, stock price is based on perceptions of people, with "perception" and "people" being the keywords there.
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Investor Carl Icahn Dumps Apple Shares Over China Concerns
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I think we're seeing the "tip of the iceburg" for Cook's catering to wallstreet.
When everything is great, Sales keep going up, and profit margins are easy to maintain due to ever increasing revenues, its very much a non issue. But, the concern I think investors / iCahn has, once sales slip, decrease, or even just normalize, the current model will have to change in order to maintain those margins. The very margins that are used by most investors to gauge future growth.
Cook will either have to answer by cutting costs to maintain margins, or, accepting that 40% margins and continous growth is not likely. If he starts cutting corners in order to save those margins by cutting, Then, he'd be catering to wallstreets demands for specific profit margins.
He can't take most o his stock yet. I think he's got to wait a couple more years. I think the next year or two will be very telling with Apple under Tim Cook. Up till now he really hasn't had to do a lot of putting out fires. He's still riding a wave of iPhone / Smartphone Growth. But now that the market has slowed down, How will he respond.
Let me share a very noteworthy insight - was meeting with some software developers that are and have been quite active at UC Berkeley, ICSI, and Stanford AI efforts. I asked for their opinions on Apple / Siri. The uniform answer was that Apple had no one that competent in the AI field. They were puzzled as to why Apple, with all its cash, had not hired the best people and become far more capable in the area. Sounds like the Maps debacle and streaming video content failure.
The thought was that possibly neither Cook nor his team can recognize talent. Picking the wrong people for the wrong reasons?
If you don't have vision and execution capacity the future looks dim......
The thought was that possibly neither Cook nor his team can recognize talent. Picking the wrong people for the wrong reasons?
If you don't have vision and execution capacity the future looks dim......
Exactly! This is one of the biggest mistakes Cook and his staff are making. I remember in one interview some time ago that Apple is in the game to bring in A-list talent and I don't think he has the ability to tap in the right people like Jobs did. Jobs was and had the experience to tap in people's talents in the right way. That's what he did with Jony, tapping into his talent and putting it in the right direction. Or Forstall by utilizing his UI background, to a degree.
So, in that sense, Cook has been bringing the wrong people into the fold such as Dr. Dre, Angela Arendts, Trent Reznor ( Nine Inch Nails ), and so on.
The AI part is a very good point you brought up. Siri should be far more than just a 'search engine' tool and be capable of acting as a voice operator for iOS ( such as " Siri, close Mail and open Facebook to log in ", " Siri, scroll down the mail list and open up John Doe's email ", etc ). Cook bragged to an interviewer that Siri would be talked about years from now. WTH? The AI hasn't evolved much.
If Apple had changed CEOs right around when Nadella got promoted to be top boss of Microsoft, they would've been able to adjust accordingly in terms of strategic thinking.
I hate to say it but Nadella outmaneuvered him despite the less market share MS has. Satya is no dummy. It is clear to me that the man is sharp and understands what's necessary to get the job done. And the reason is that Satya has an engineering background and Tim doesn't. Huge difference.
All I know if that Apple doesn't get on board with AI/Machine Learning soon, they are doomed. That's going to be the HUGE differentiation between competing devices. And they need to get on it quick or find themselves yet again behind a la Maps, and be forever trying to catchup.
That's exactly the problem. No confidence in their ability to innovate. Gone are the innovative days of colorful Macs, OS X, iPods, iPhones, and iPads.
Steve used to walk out on stage with fresh innovative, well design products in hand every 2-3 years.
Tim, going on 5 years as CEO, walks out with a stylus pencil.
Steve did 2-3 keynotes a year. Clearly he wasn't that much of a deity either if over 80% of them failed to provide "fresh, innovative, well designed products".
As others have said, were reaching a point where everything is becoming stale. It's not Apples fault and imo they can't control it at all, but when people can achieve 95% of what they can in the Mac/iOS environment on any other generic device it's hard to find innovation.
Their only hope, as it were, is further integration of things like handoff and continuity. Improvements to iCloud. Without these things I could replace my Mac with a dell PC and get a xiaomi phone to replace my iPhone 6.
We have chronically misreported inflation – just like a chronically untruthful unemployment rate and a lot of other figures the government puts out. They change how things are reported over time and use a certain level of subjectivity and estimates in their figures (read about inflation and substitution, for example). It's convenient for them to report inflation low when certain benefits they pay out are indexed to inflation (social security benefits, for example). Reporting low inflation also makes the current people in office look good. Always consider other sources. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts shows inflation if it were calculated the same way as it was in the 1990s. To say that we've had basically no inflation in 16 years is to listen exclusively to one source which has strong reason to be biased in its reporting and a history of changing its methodology.
Look at the interest rates you get from US bonds of any duration or type today vs 10 years ago and 20 years ago. Look at the interest rates you can get from your credit union or bank savings account vs what you'd get 10 years ago and 20 years ago. The interest rates available to savers and fixed-income retirees offer almost no return on capital. This is a result of massive government intervention in the markets over the course of the last several years. Their policies are how they are messing with savers.
Nothing about this economy is normal. Our government has gone trillions over budget the last 8 years; a lot of debt to monetize. Ordinarily, they'd have to provide a reasonable promise of return to sell so much debt -- a return that savers could have access to. Instead, they just have the Federal Reserve step in and monetize more debt than they've ever monetized before. https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TREAST shows the Federal Reserve holding onto $2.4 Trillion worth of US Treasury Notes and Bonds.
In the last 8 years we've had TARP, a trillion dollar stimulus package, several rounds of "quantitative easing", a Federal Reserve chief who thought dropping money from helicopters could end recessions, an agenda focussed on "spend-spend-spend", "be a consumer", "keep interest rates as low as possible for spenders", and recently rumors of negative interest rates to really screw savers. All economic policy has been designed to encourage spending to boost asset prices, not to do anything for savers. Economic policy which measures success in boosting asset prices hurts savers even more because their prudence of saving is actively punished -- when they go to spend their money, they get less for what they could have if there was not so much artificial intervention.
In summary, if our economy was functioning normally and didn't have all of these perverse incentives, savers with cash would not have to risk so much to attract a better return and their cash would go further than it does in our current "juiced" system.
It is not "scary" for inflation to be low. It's only scary that no one questions the reporting methodologies and data that government entities put out. Understand that:
- Inflation is a loss of purchasing power.
- Inflation is not growth.
- Inflation is a confiscation of wealth.
- Inflation hurts savers, especially.
- Inflation benefits debtors like our government (because they can pay back their debts in inflated currency that is less valuable than their creditors thought they would get).
Say you have $50,000 and a 2% inflation rate, meaning the cost of everything goes up 2% a year. That means after 1 year, your $50,000 and only buys $49,000 worth of stuff. After two years, your $50,000 only buys $48,020 worth of stuff. Etc. That number keeps going down until eventually, that $50,000 does not get you much of anything. You get robbed slowly, over time, because those who manage the currency are so inept they believe they can print their way out. Inflation never ends well, even for debtor governments that might benefit from it for a certain time (because their people are soon left without anything).
Don't necessarily know what "on sale for eBay" means, but in any case, I just found out that he's not in eBay stock anymore (he switched it with PayPal, which I'm equally as annoyed about, but glad he's off eBay now: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/16/carl-icahn-exits-ebay-stake-opts-for-paypal-after-spinoff.html).
He's one of the reasons why eBay and PayPal are no longer together. He (apparently) wanted PayPal to be able to complete against Apple Pay and Square and stated that eBay was holding them back (I call shenanigans, but whatever). I remember him, Elon Musk, and a few other people saying that they should split up. Frankly, I don't understand why the companies needed to split up, though; they were doing just fine together and there was no point in wasting time doing said spinoff.
All interesting stuff. Especially the stuff about the secret inflation. I want to look into that. But even those alternative numbers aren't particularly high.
I will certainly agree with you that our economy is being muddled with in very interesting and possibly counter productive ways. However there is some evidence out there that a 2% target for inflation is actually too low. That is because inflation can spur investment. That "robbing" of value that you talk about is actually something of an incentive to savers to go out and find a worthwhile use for their saved money instead of taking the easy way of leaving it in a bank account or government bond. Inflation can also increase the value of most people's biggest asset, their work product. The typical worker has very little money saved, but decades of productive work left to sell. The fact that their savings decreases a bit in value might be very much offset if their future production increases in value. And also many people owe more in debt (between mortgage and student loans) than they have in savings (meaning cash and securities). The cost of the mortgage and loans are reduced by inflation, while the value of their house is unaffected by inflation (i.e., sale price of house goes up, but purchasing power from the sale goes down; net wash except for the mortgage which is at fixed rate unaffected by inflation) and the price that they sell their production goes up with inflation. So for the middle class a little inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I will have to come back to your post to read it again. Interesting stuff.
Yep i already replaced my mac with an XPS15 DUE TO LACK OF CURRENT TECH from Apple. I'm evaluating Android that costs half the price this fall.
I looked at bit at the ShadowStats guy and it looks like he has been predicting that Hyper Inflation of US dollar is right around the corner and has been for quite some time. I saw a paper he wrote called Hyper Inflation 2012 which predicted Hyper Inflation be a near certainty by 2014. Well that didn't come close to happening. Seems a bit suspicious.
No, you don't. You need to learn his record to see that the ONLY person he is out for is himself. He is one of the primary people the character of Gordon Gekko is based on... that's not a good thing. You should ask people who used to work at TWA what they think of Icahn.
Robbing people of what they work for is a crooked deal. Inflation is theft, thus viewing any positive target inflation rate as “too low” is to suggest we should somehow accept that it’s okay we’re being robbed. The inflators are saying, “There are positive benefits that your money lost value; look at this behavior it might spur!” Don’t fall for the misdirection. If you invest without inflation you would be even further ahead.
Furthermore, saving capital for personal needs down the line is a worthwhile use of money. Large asset purchases depend on a wealth base to draw from. Having little to no capital to draw from generates huge risk in other areas and we already see that. 62% of Americans can't cover an unexpected $500 expense. Pushing dependency on borrowing further ruins an individual’s forward progress as they have to sacrifice even more money to pay loan interest.
Inflation does not increase the value of one's work product. Wages may go up, but when inflation is taken into account, real wages have been flat or falling, except for some upper income earners:
Pew Research Center said:
Pew Research Center said:
95% of people have incomes that get devalued by inflation!
Thus, the only way to offset a decline in purchasing power through your work product is to work more – a theft of your time to save your purchasing power.
Inflation is the temporary illusion of prosperity at the cost of debasing your purchasing power.
Inflation can benefit debtors as they can pay off fixed loans with inflated dollars, sure, but this scenario ignores the whole picture and the damage inflation does to everyone else.
This scenario looks as a time slice of a persons’s life in which they might typically hold debt. How many years of a person’s life will they be in debt vs not in debt? How many people are going to buy houses? How many people will hold student loan debt? Some very rough checking suggests there are 131 million houses and that 29% of people over 25 may have a student loan if you want to correlate that “bachelor’s degree or higher”. Given our current population of 323 million people, these figures suggests the majority of people will not experience this scenario. We could talk about multiple home purchases or trends in higher education, but the fact is, loans for both are hard to come by for a population that ultimately has hardly any savings to draw from.
You cannot generalize inflation as a good thing with scenarios that ignore its cost to everyone else. Inflation is loss and theft!
Inflation is always a bad thing unless you are a permanent debtor. Debasing a currency to give a temporary illusion of growth or prosperity always ends in disaster.
Well I find it very hard to believe that 60% of Americans don't have $500 in their bank account. But I guess between the very elderly and the very young, that might be the case. Still I'm skeptical that the respondents to the poll understood the question or answered it accurately.
I also don't think inflation is the main problem for workers in the U.S. The main problem is that the rest of the world is getting much more competitive with the U.S. Now that good products can be made all over the world and shipped, the value of workers world wide has increased and the U.S. worker has become less valuable. That isn't caused by inflation.
Finally saying that most Americans have no cash available, but also are not getting the benefit of debt reduction just doesn't make sense. I know many folks live pay check to pay check, but really suggesting that everyone keeps this balancing act at nearly zero for most of their life just can't be right. Most people have some cash and then either have student loans or a mortgage for a portion of their life. Even credit card debt is at a fixed interest and "decreases" based on inflation. And the savors who maybe are exposed to inflation (which is your concern) largely have their savings in an asset which should appreciate with inflation. Stocks and real estate holdings should all appreciate with inflation. Nobody is expected to hold a huge portion of their wealth in just cash. Bonds would be the only asset that I can think of which is held in large amounts but which is not naturally hedged against inflation.
Inflation is the problem. It's the reason we have such a huge wealth inequality. It's the reason the middle class is dying. It's the reason that the minimum wage needs to be raised every few years.
Inflation disproportionately affects the poor and middle class while enriching the 1% who own most of the assets.
We had little or no inflation for over a hundred years until 1913 where inflation began to take off, especially since 1971. The US built the middle class in that non inflationary environment. We've been killing it ever since.
Have you ever met anyone who wants to pay higher prices? Do you ever shop around for the best price? Do you go to sales when stores have them? Mild deflation is the natural state of affairs where productivity and innovation allow things to be made cheaper and more efficiently over time. This is a good thing!
Inflation only serves the banks who get to steal productivity from the worker a little at a time. There's a reason it's called the invisible tax.
It's sad that a whole generation has been brainwashed by the educational establishment that inflation is good for us.
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