Stock Talk

In the few days that have passed since Apple’s latest quarterly results, people can’t seem to stop writing about the so-called stalled growth and “margin collapse” that hit the company. Ok, the term “collapse” is excessively stupid (you know who you are, stop it). Apple’s revenue is still growing, but profitability is down year over year. The profit decline is due to undeniably lower gross margin. But what does that mean?

Earlier this week, Mal Spooner from Money wrote a piece about the swarming of Apple stock. In the article, he equates street swarming -- when a gang surrounds and often attacks an unsuspecting victim -- to the swarming of a stock by short sellers. The main difference, he suggests, is that in a street swarming there is no real motive. Yet in a short-seller swarming, the motive is to rob investors by driving the stock price down.

In an early morning San Francisco interview-style format, Tim Cook delivered his message at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. All said, I thought he said some pretty interesting things. Most of it wasn’t brand new information, but some of it was. Here’s a recap of the one hour presentation.

Here we go again. Another Apple quarter that demonstrates long term strength in its business, and another quarter where Wall Street is waving its hands in the air claiming that the business is broken. Apple shares are down over $50 (10%) as I write this.

Always remember value investor Benjamin Graham’s famous expression: In the short term the market acts like a voting machine. In the long term it acts like a weighing machine. Today, the voting machine dominates. But over the course of many product cycles, those daily votes amount to nothing. That’s why the market is volatile, and why I focus on long term investing.