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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stock bull who wrote (69531)	10/2/2007 2:24:00 PM
From: Keith Feral	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

If $160 is your exit point, don't be afraid to take it. However, keep the big picture in mind. This stock could easily run to $200 this year and announce a stock split. Look at the price of RIMM after the 4 for 1 split. It is closing on $100. I would love to see Apple announce a 4 for 1 split and watch the stock trade back to $100. You could also pick up some premium by selling the covered calls at $160 to take you out of the stock. With interest rates declining, PE expansion is going to get much better. Think about the old Graham and Dodd tables for interest rates and PE's. Bottom line, you get higher multiples for growth stocks when interest rates decline. The other issue is EPS surprises. I think the EPS estimates are way too low for the stock. A big EPS surprise this quarter could lead to serious price target revisions to the upside. I finally get to play with my iPod on a flight this weekend. I finally realized how useful they can be for listening to music or watching movies on the plane. It would have been much easier to watch 1 or 2 movies than listening to 85 songs back and forth. Time to buy a few movies from iTunes.

To: stock bull who wrote (69531)	10/2/2007 2:32:37 PM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213182

stock bull, just because an analyst has a price target of $160 doesn't mean that they'll issue a sell recommendation based upon the stock reaching that target. That almost never happens. For example, most analysts now have internal earnings estimate numbers well in excess of what their official published estimates are. They'll wait for October's earnings announcement, up their numbers a bit, and show that their models give them a new, higher price target. It's all rather silly, really. Heck, even when the earnings announcement doesn't lead to that conclusion, they'll still raise their price target when the stock gets to the old target. A lot of times they'll lower their discount rate on future earnings and thus be able to raise their price target even using the same earnings numbers. Again, it is all rather silly. That's why price targets are irrelevant to almost all institutional customers. The targets are just contrived BS from a spreadsheet that really doesn't mean anything. As long as a stock is in an uptrend, an analyst with a buy recommendation won't lower the rating, no matter what happens. They're scared of missing the train. They won't lower their recommendation of a stock until well after the uptrend is over. Every analyst doesn't act like this, granted, but most of them do.