Apple: Five essential market lessons

“I’ve been writing about Apple for a long time now and only two weeks ago I predicted the stock would quickly make a 10% run,” Clem Chambers writes for Forbes. “As I write, during the 12/2/2013 pre-market, it is up 9.1%. Rather than wait for it to hit 10%, I thought I’d bring this to the fore today, because it illustrates nicely some important principles.”

“I’m not an Apple bull,” Chambers writes. “Star stocks like Apple are dicey at the best of times… I don’t like Apple stock. I see the company’s lunch getting eaten around the world in shopping malls from Tokyo to Mumbai, Dubai to London. But I might be dead wrong. I do know however, that ‘the market’ has been amazingly strong and that short of a reversal of fortune caused by a Fed “taper” or an unexpected event, this rally is going to roll.”

MacDailyNews Take: It depends on who’s eating the lunch, Clem. Unit sales do not equal profit share. Unit sales most certainly do not equal customer quality. 1,000 cheapskates who buy nothing do not equal one quality customer who participates routinely in a vibrant ecosystem. You cannot see the forest for the trees, Clem.

Although Clem is dead wrong about who’s eating whose shopping mall lunches, his five market lessons do contain value.

Lesson 1: When normal metrics break down, you are at the mercy of words.
Lesson 2: You have to trade what you see not what you believe.
Lesson 3: In trading, it is the scale that is as important as direction.
Lesson 4: Do not fight a trend, follow it if you love it.
Lesson 5: All you have to know is whether the market is going up or down.

Read more about each of the five lessons above in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]


  1. Yeah he has real insight, The trend in malls (now and for the last decade) is away from the upper end, high margin “brand” store and to the discount everything under the sun a razor thin margins “let’s make a deal” vendors.

    Why this trend can even been seen in freestanding stores. Why just look at Best Buy, Circuit City, and comp USA they are booming!

  2. *Yawn*

    Is there anyone reporting anything new? Anywhere? The whole article is re-chewed food. It’s like the theme song to Gilligan’s Island. Everybody who’s ever been interested already knows all the words. And, like Gilligan’s Island, it’s fictional.

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