I am long Apple (congrats on another all-time high today), and therefore will not post a bearish case :) . Overpriced is not a bearish case. Go ahead and short it, you may catch a 20 percent move again. Big woop. The only bearish case is too much love which Eric from Blackstar (long Apple) describes below (I am more interested in the fact that Eric left his home).
I just got back from a week in San Jose. Kids there don’t even know what a PC is. It’s all Apple, all the time, everywhere. One of my cousins quit Adobe and now works for Apple. I went to a 50 person dinner with a bunch of Persians. There was a pile of i phones and 1 Motorola Razor (the razor was mine). Coffee shops: mac’s. Airport: mac’s. Light rail: Mac’s. Even my dad was shoving original apple stock certificates from 1986 in my face.
Probably the top.
A real good long term bullish cash is made hysterically by ‘Fake Steve Jobs’ and that’s that the TV networks don’t get it . Steve Jobs and the ‘fake’ Steve Jobs are patient, so the slow painful gut wrenching leak from network TV to companies like Apple is fine with him. My fave part:
Here’s what I tell them. Friends, you run a television network. Now let’s think about this. What the fuck is a television network? It’s a system of affiliates designed to help carry a broadcast signal across the wide continent of America on airwaves and into television sets owned by millions of people. In essence, you are in the distribution business. In the second half of the twentieth century you had the great good fortune to be granted a kind of limited monopoly over the distribution of a very valuable commodity. There were only so many airwaves, hence only so many networks. There were way more advertisers than there were channels to carry their advertising. So you sat there with your choke-hold on the garden hose, controlling the flow of programming and getting fatter and fatter and fatter.
It was a wonderful system. For you anyway. Except that it had one huge flaw. Which is that for you guys, the middlemen, to get rich, you needed to fuck over the people at both ends of the value chain — the consumers who had no choice in what they watched and spent years being fed mountains of dog shit, and the producers of content who were at your mercy and had to negotiate with this tiny number of networks who operated, let’s be honest here, as a kind of cartel.
I don’t think it’s the top until somebody is actually ARRESTED for praying in front of an Apple store :) :
Disclosure – Long Apple
First Fake Steve Jobs? More like A-Hole Steve Jobs. Aren’t these things suppose to be funny?
Now I personally have no love for NBC or the big TV Networks but I am a big TV fan and follow the TV Industry closely so I have a couple of thoughts.
First Howard, TV Networks ARE getting it. They are realizing viewing habits, distribution methods are changing so they are slowly getting with the times. Also the bashing old media is really getting old. Their influence has diminished somehwhat but they still have the money and power.
Now I’m assuming this was in response to the big Apple/NBC breakup. In political science terms Apple is the aggressor. You can worship Apple all you want but the fact of the matter is their getting arrogant. Not to a certain extent all successfull enterprises get called arrogant at some point but the laughable hissy fit tactic at the way they pulled all NBC shows just because NBC wouldn’t play ball with them and didn’t renew their contract is proof at this said arrogance. The irony is that Apple is the big media company who use to have a monopoly on the online music and to a lesser extent tv content online. Now some companies are getting bolder and defecting and Apple isn’t happy with it. The thing that bothers Apple isn’t that NBC is not with them but that they are starting up their own online distribution channels.
obviously you are short apple. who cares if he is cocky now. paid his freaking dues. will pay them again I am sure.
I am not bashing old media. i am linking to it.
also – checked a newspaper stock price lately save wallstreeet journal
You are being polite Howard and that’s what’s cool about you–you tend to be fair to your readers, but the networks don’t get it. Period!
You know I’m no fan of Apple and Jesus in the black turtle neck, but in this battle Apple has the moral imperative to use Panda’s pseudo political science lingo. NBC wants to charge $4.99 for their shit content which is free on TV and Apple said no. Greed is not exclusive to Silicon valley and hedge funds. The networks and cable bastards have been pigs for decades and now they are simply the victims of creative destruction. Network consolidation is around the corner and this guys better figure out that they are not in the TV business but the distribution of content business like you point out.
Also, the guy who wrote the funny piece is basically plagiarizing from ‘Life After the 30-second Spot’ by Joseph Jaffe. The book came out in 2005 and if you have not read it I recommend you do. It’s require reading in marketing courses these days.
And while I don’t like Apple I do admire how they have destroyed bigger foes. They have practically re-difined the concept of product development and marketing. I would never short this company.