As an aside, this is the joke in my opinion. I looked it up on Bloomberg this morning, and on January 13, 2005, when AAPL was trading at $70 per share, Merrill Lynch came out and set a 12-month target of $85/sh. Well, one month later the stock is there (yesterday), and overnight they up the target another 20% to $102/sh. Well, HTF did they come up with such a nice round number of 20%? Isn't that uncanny? I am mesmerized that a financial model spits out such nice round numbers.
The question I think sell side analysts should have to explain to the public is how sloppy their work was one month ago to justify this magnitude of a correction in a target just 30 days later. That is why I call them lemmings. If they get left behind the price momentum, they lose credibility, but their work has no credibility to begin with since there is no logical explanation for such variances, no mea culpas, nothing. Nobody makes a stand for fear of being shut of of the company conference call, the opportunity to ask that question to company management that invariably is always preceded by, "Great quarter, guys, good job!", for fear of losing their perceived credibility with the more naive investors and perhaps their own circle of professionals. The system sucks and it needs to be changed.
Anyway, enough ranting for now. That aside, AAPL is trucking along making another high today. IMO when it turns it is going to be ugly. But that could well be a long time from now.
Best regards, |
