| | | I totally agree with your take, Bill, and also enjoyed the replies in the chain, especially from the person who sells leather goods on ETSY and now has 50,000 followers on Instagram. Kudos on that!
I haven't sold all my Apple, but I did sell some of it and move to Facebook and Amazon. I did it for the same reasons that others have mentioned:
1. Growth is slowing
A) They've lengthened the upgrade cycle to three years, thereby diminishing unit sales
B) China isn't going to be the growth engine they hyped it as
2. Tim Cook is a "workmanship" type CEO, but doesn't excite anybody with his vision of the future. Vision is a big part of tech. The CEO's of companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Salesforce know how to explain their companies' vision. That's not Tim Cook's forte with Apple.
I've been burned owning Apple. It was the first stock in my portfolio to implode in '08, and the first again in '015, a time when other tech stocks rallied for most of the year. Why is this strong company, such as weak-as-dishwater stock? It's always the first to take a beating when the market goes down, and always fails the last to recover. Nor has it been a particularly good long-term investment. Most people who've owned it since it first went public in the early 80's have lost money selling it during its frequent crash-and-burn events. It's a magnet for critics to bash. It first hit $100 in September 2012. It's lower now. It's been a classic "disaster stock" for me.
But there is one positive nobody talks about much, and that is the stock buyback. They're buying back around 6% of the stock per year. If that continues, they'll have taken 100% of the stock off the market in 15 years. As that time approaches, the dwindling number of publicly traded shares should increase in value. When you're in your 50's, as I am, 15 years goes by quicker than you think. I'm wondering if the buybacks alone make this a viable long-term investment. Warren Buffet thinks so, and he's no dummy. |
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