People can spin it any way they want, but this is just not good news. The market currently has absolutely no confidence in Apple's ability to generate value from future growth opportunities. And, we can criticize or chuckle at Google all we want (I often get in on it too), but they have a narrative that the market is buying in droves. As it currently does with Facebook and Microsoft as well.
Kudos to them.
Apple truly can and must do better on conveying some sense of who or what it wants to be 2, 5, 10 years out. This is not rocket science. Every major company does it in some form or the other. That's a huge part of what CEOs are paid to do. It involves much more than talking about "industrial era taxes", "dollar versus yuan", etc.
I realize a lot of people here do not own AAPL and therefore couldn't care less, but for those of us who have been very long-term shareholders of the company, this news hurts. There is simply no need for such underachievement. It's bewildering.
(And, please spare me the vacuous stuff about "Wall Street casino" and such; those are simply sound bites).
Google in its financial report today uses the same dollar corrected metric.
Who said they didn't?
You should reread what I wrote. I was talking about what their CEOs talk about.
While we need to see if Alphabet holds all of those gains tomorrow to see if they hold the "crown" for long, I personally think Apple would benefit by being out of the number one spot (e.g. target) for awhile. Let Alpha-Google be the darling child, but then also the eventual target of the media.
Such gloom & doom on this board regarding Apple!! Poor company - it was born with a silver spoon in its mouth and never had to innovate or build anything - never had to overcome adversity - what ever will they do? Only $212 Billion in the bank? Clearly never saved for a rainy day. Taking a look over the last two years, it would seem that their main product line is up about 40% - clearly they have no idea how to grow it. Sure their in-house CPU & GPU design teams may be top notch and achieving gains above all others, but now that the iPhone has hit a speed bump with first quarter of declines ever, there is obviously no way they can use such technology for future products.
I highly recommend that anyone with AAPL on this board sell it & buy Alphabet shares. Apple needs to buy back some more shares, so then do need people to sell.
big pile of cash saved for rainy days is exactly what bothers market and investors.
What they lack is the ability to communicate their vision to the market under the current crew. And they have a Board that is populated with a bunch of mediocre has-beens.
I don't know anything about the board but I have to agree that communication and narrative is Apple's biggest issue right now. Cook was hitting his stride there for a while but this last earnings call was not great. Especially the abrupt pivot to hey we're a services company now which is is pretty much BS. I've said for a long time Apple needs to get better at communicating and controlling the narrative. I think it's more important than ever. And if Apple does need to pivot to services then Cook needs to find someone better than Eddy Cue to oversee it.
People can spin it any way they want, but this is just not good news. The market currently has absolutely no confidence in Apple's ability to generate value from future growth opportunities. And, we can criticize or chuckle at Google all we want (I often get in on it too), but they have a narrative that the market is buying in droves. As it currently does with Facebook and Microsoft as well.
Kudos to them.
Apple truly can and must do better on conveying some sense of who or what it wants to be 2, 5, 10 years out. This is not rocket science. Every major company does it in some form or the other. That's a huge part of what CEOs are paid to do. It involves much more than talking about "industrial era taxes", "dollar versus yuan", etc.
I realize a lot of people here do not own AAPL and therefore couldn't care less, but for those of us who have been very long-term shareholders of the company, this news hurts. There is simply no need for such underachievement. It's bewildering.
(And, please spare me the vacuous stuff about "Wall Street casino" and such; those are simply sound bites).
You think google or Facebook has articulated what they will be in 2,5,10 years from now?
The fact that you can't or don't see it means nothing.
This is bad news. wall street knows that minor spec bumps on pc's and same ol thing each year isn't sustainable.
iPhones sales are down because the S model was a minor upgrade. 3D touch is a gimmick. yes, it's fater, but that's not enough anymore. People now understand that iPhone is $1000 thanks to Next/Edge plans. Phone sales will continue to go down. Apple thinks it can just sit around and coast. They aren't doing anything. They spec bump and sit back down. No innovation going on. The phone OS looks the same year after year. The hardware gets a new haircut once every 2 years. Not good enough in today's market.
Macs are just on auto pilot. Swap the proc and ram. Done til next year.
I think Tim Cook needs to step aside, and someone needs to make Ives get off his ass.
Oh and according to someone in my Twitter feed Nest and Fiber performed 30% worse than expected. Let's see where the stock lands tomorrow. It was up over $50 right after earnings were announced but has come down $30 since.
Have you perhaps at any point considered that there's nothing else to talk about apart from "dollar vs. yuan" and stuff?
I have, and you're utterly wrong.
Apple has incredible talent, incredible design and product development skills, incredible resources, and a heritage of quality, ballsiness and management skills developed in spades by SJ over a decade and a half. They have had a growth path that is beyond compare, and every one of their current senior managers (except Ahrendts) has been a part of that story and has witnessed that first hand. They have the ability to manage costs -- thanks to Tim Cook -- that few others, in this industry or any other, can match. They have opportunities in enterprise, health, education, automobiles, the living room, home automation, services, payments, India, etc (I am sure I am missing a few) that few companies can dream of accessing.
What they lack is the ability to communicate their vision to the market under the current crew. And they have a Board that is populated with a bunch of mediocre has-beens.
I wish I would be wrong, but what you are talking about are simply already recognised relatively distributed opportunities where Apple simply competes with many others. There's no big innovation here and honestly Apple is munching for ages in some of these areas. Like living room for one. Why would these deserve P/E more than 10?
Instead of bitching about Apple stock being undervalued, go buy some AAPL if you believe (as I do) that Apple's future is bright. This negative sentiment is just a buying opportunity. Apple could very well prove everyone wrong by releasing a fantastic iPhone 7 this fall. And sooner or later people will start upgrading all those aging iPad 2 tablets.
And maybe, eventually, the Apple Watch will be compelling (well, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. ).
Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.
While we need to see if Alphabet holds all of those gains tomorrow to see if they hold the "crown" for long, I personally think Apple would benefit by being out of the number one spot (e.g. target) for awhile. Let Alpha-Google be the darling child, but then also the eventual target of the media.
Such gloom & doom on this board regarding Apple!! Poor company - it was born with a silver spoon in its mouth and never had to innovate or build anything - never had to overcome adversity - what ever will they do? Only $212 Billion in the bank? Clearly never saved for a rainy day. Taking a look over the last two years, it would seem that their main product line is up about 40% - clearly they have no idea how to grow it. Sure their in-house CPU & GPU design teams may be top notch and achieving gains above all others, but now that the iPhone has hit a speed bump with first quarter of declines ever, there is obviously no way they can use such technology for future products.
I highly recommend that anyone with AAPL on this board sell it & buy Alphabet shares. Apple needs to buy back some more shares, so then do need people to sell.
big pile of cash saved for rainy days is exactly what bothers market and investors.
Yet that "big pile of cash saved for rainy days" is exactly what powered Apple through the "Great Recession" and set it up for the company that it is today.
What investors want is a roadmap of what Apple is working on, but that isn't going to happen, and that is 100% of the culture that Steve left. So Tim's statements that "we have great new products in the pipeline" isn't going to assuage investors either. At the same time, the siren song of advertising and services seems to hold sway, so let that drive the world's economy for awhile. Let Google and Facebook prosper from advertising if that is to be.
This is bad news. wall street knows that minor spec bumps on pc's and same ol thing each year isn't sustainable.
iPhones sales are down because the S model was a minor upgrade. 3D touch is a gimmick. yes, it's fater, but that's not enough anymore. People now understand that iPhone is $1000 thanks to Next/Edge plans. Phone sales will continue to go down. Apple thinks it can just sit around and coast. They aren't doing anything. They spec bump and sit back down. No innovation going on. The phone OS looks the same year after year. The hardware gets a new haircut once every 2 years. Not good enough in today's market.
Macs are just on auto pilot. Swap the proc and ram. Done til next year.
I think Tim Cook needs to step aside, and someone needs to make Ives get off his ass.
That's load of bollocks. All these products are way beyond competition or at least slightly ahead. Problem is they are continuously struggling to capitalise on user base in terms of services. The latter rose slighlty more than Google's revenue. Mostly through Appstore where the prices are growing constantly. On the other hand Google managed to achieve this growth with drastically falling average prices of mobile adverts by just simply winding up the quantity of forced adverts on all its channels. Apple simply can't do this...
Google is in the business of selling the information. Apple is in the business of selling the product with some services. Apart from music and the apps, they are not very good in anything else and even here it takes them years to move over a single milestone partly due to nature of the business and partly due to nature of Apple . Google on the other hand changes and adapts to trends easily and quickly and is un disputable market leader in advertising by far. I'm sorry to admit that Apple with its honest policy of privacy and other morals stands no chance in competing with Google in service industry.
Guy, unless you have hard fact to prove. Apple this year will add another 50billion to its cash reserves. Think what you want but predicting the future of a company with a quarter alone is as predicting a teendline with only a point. Apple has passed through speed bumps before. That said, maybe is the beginning of the end, but judging from the overall sentiment in the forums, and knowing that broad sentiment in something is most of the time wrong. I feel confident in the company. Even stagnating, something that seing the capex and investment plans I think will not happen, Apple must accumulate until 2020 between 200-250 additional billions to its cash reserves, if you prefer, no less than 400 billion in cash-flow.
Now please, go to Google and tell me how much needs to grow Alphabet to 2020 to match that figure, not beat it, match. And don't tell me that from now on iis downhill for Apple that's as wishfull thinking as two digit grow can be. There are not hard evidence of any of those. The only hard fact we know is that Apple still expands is sales network in China and India. Hardly a symptom of any serious long term slowdown.
so as I ask Tell me how Google can generate with its revenue growth at high teens 400 billion cash flow untill 2020 and I will accept Google is more valuable long term than Appke.
ah, and that fairy tale that Wall Street only value growth, only in your dreams, history says that really succesfull investors (Buffett, Graham, Icahn) are interested in VALUE not in growth. Buffett was the most succesfull investor ever well before buying any red hot growth stock, something that he never have bought. And in VALUE Apple is king.
Cash.... What did huge pile of cash do to Apple business today and what has much smaller done to Google and other companies for that matter?
Let's see how did it work for Apple: - the biggest buyback in history made no impact on company valuation, actually, it was negative - the biggest purchase in Apple's history brought no revolutionary changes in music business, it actually brought a lot of integration issues and Music is generally percieved as not really good app for the purpose - despite rising research expenditures they are falling in percentage and are among the lowest in industry which gives pretty much good idea that there's in no "next big thing" up the sleeve.
This is all very clear to market and that's why they see pile of cash as liability and not as an asset. Value? Buffet? Well, he is advocating invenstments in value, yes. He invested hugely again in IBM when it was valued 200.... nuff said...
So they sell ads. And an analyst said they will sell more ads in 5 years.
I mean, really, Apple has a much more cohesive message in terms of OS, HW, App, Content Distribution, and Related Services then almost any other company out there, and it's pretty clear to anyone with a small percentage of a brain.
It's funny, everyone was agog over Facebook's 1.5 billion active users. Cook noted that Apple surpassed the 1 billion active user mark in the last quarter. Which company has a far greater product, content, and service mix to monetize that with deliverable benefits, vs selling ads or (in the future) monetizing videos? Which company has the far more compelling and deep Venn diagram of revenue and profitability?
Apple was RIGHT to point out the growing services ecosystem. Especially with such high custsat ratings, (presuming they maintain this), the revenue growth potential from content, apps, internet services and more is incredible.
What's the average spend of those billion users per quarter for Apple? $1? $2? And over time?
This is bad news. wall street knows that minor spec bumps on pc's and same ol thing each year isn't sustainable.
iPhones sales are down because the S model was a minor upgrade. 3D touch is a gimmick. yes, it's fater, but that's not enough anymore. People now understand that iPhone is $1000 thanks to Next/Edge plans. Phone sales will continue to go down. Apple thinks it can just sit around and coast. They aren't doing anything. They spec bump and sit back down. No innovation going on. The phone OS looks the same year after year. The hardware gets a new haircut once every 2 years. Not good enough in today's market.
Macs are just on auto pilot. Swap the proc and ram. Done til next year.
I think Tim Cook needs to step aside, and someone needs to make Ives get off his ass.
That's load of bollocks. All these products are way beyond competition or at least slightly ahead. Problem is they are continuously struggling to capitalise on user base in terms of services. The latter rose slighlty more than Google's revenue. Mostly through Appstore where the prices are growing constantly. On the other hand Google managed to achieve this growth with drastically falling average prices of mobile adverts by just simply winding up the quantity of forced adverts on all its channels. Apple simply can't do this...
Apple can do this they're just not assholes.
Most of the replies in the comments section are funny.
Apple is Dooomed! No innovation(while other companies sit on their ass waiting for Apple)
This is bad news. wall street knows that minor spec bumps on pc's and same ol thing each year isn't sustainable.
iPhones sales are down because the S model was a minor upgrade. 3D touch is a gimmick. yes, it's fater, but that's not enough anymore. People now understand that iPhone is $1000 thanks to Next/Edge plans. Phone sales will continue to go down. Apple thinks it can just sit around and coast. They aren't doing anything. They spec bump and sit back down. No innovation going on. The phone OS looks the same year after year. The hardware gets a new haircut once every 2 years. Not good enough in today's market.
Macs are just on auto pilot. Swap the proc and ram. Done til next year.
I think Tim Cook needs to step aside, and someone needs to make Ives get off his ass.
3D touch is mutitouch 2.0. You know, the tech %95 of phones in the world now use. Let's call it a gimmick and spec bumps from iKnockoffs "innovation"!
People can spin it any way they want, but this is just not good news. The market currently has absolutely no confidence in Apple's ability to generate value from future growth opportunities. And, we can criticize or chuckle at Google all we want (I often get in on it too), but they have a narrative that the market is buying in droves. As it currently does with Facebook and Microsoft as well.
Kudos to them.
Apple truly can and must do better on conveying some sense of who or what it wants to be 2, 5, 10 years out. This is not rocket science. Every major company does it in some form or the other. That's a huge part of what CEOs are paid to do. It involves much more than talking about "industrial era taxes", "dollar versus yuan", etc.
I realize a lot of people here do not own AAPL and therefore couldn't care less, but for those of us who have been very long-term shareholders of the company, this news hurts. There is simply no need for such underachievement. It's bewildering.
(And, please spare me the vacuous stuff about "Wall Street casino" and such; those are simply sound bites).
I don't know what you expect Apple to do. Wall Street is schizo when it comes to Apple, and always has been. In my opinion, their expectations are insane. Apple is selling an unbelievable amount of product and is massively profitable. Growth cannot continue at exponential levels forever...there are only so many people in the world capable of buy a smartphone. 1.2 billion smartphones were shipped last year, or 1/7th of the world's population. Should Apple start a breeding program?
Apple needs to buy companies mindlessly. Just blow thru wads of cash.
Seems to be what the analysts want.
And my Twitter feed is all services, services, services. While I wouldn't mind it if Eddy Cue was replaced I hope we don't get some knee jerk reaction from Apple management because the buzz is all around "services". What services are we talking about anyway? Apple's made its position on advertising pretty clear and most of its software is free (baked into the price of the device). So outside of some subscription TV service what other services can Apple pivot to without completely going against its values or outside its core competencies?
And as I'm typing this I noticed the CNN anchor babe on my TV is wearing a Hermés double tour Apple Watch.
Bottom line is Apple is known as an innovative company. Yet the CEO is not an innovator.
How does that make any sense?
Has Tim Cook done anything innovative in his entire life? Has Tim Cook ever created a product or invented anything in his life?
The path to restoring Apple's glory is obvious. We need a CEO who is an innovator. How the hell can someone lead the most innovative company on the planet if they aren't innovative? That's like having a Pope who is a know murderer and thief. That's like having a university Dean who can't read. Its like having an executive chef who can't cook.
Apple needs to do to get back on track:
1. Fire Tim Cook and replace him with an innovative CEO who actually built his own company. 2. Make it clear to Wall Street that this will be a new era of Apple. Gross margins won't be as high as the past nor profits. The reason is because they will be building for the future. This is an investment period. But in the end Apple will come out bigger and better.
3. Make clear to Wall Street your broad 3 year, 5 year, and 10 year goals. I'll start. The 3 year goal should be to have over 1 billion iPhone users around the world. 5 year goal is to have services/software revenue be 50% of the companies revenue.
4. Give better value for your products. Stop trying to maximize every single cent of profit. Who cares if margins drop from 40% to 38%. We are playing for the long-term. Give a better experience and customers will return. Stop doing cheap tricks like 16GB phones, pathetic 5GB of free iCloud per account, or smaller flash memory in iMac's, or not updating iPad's for 2 years. Stop making cheaper priced models total crap just to get an upsell.
5. Start new services to monitize the user base. Either buy companies or build your own. Apple at a minimum should have their toes in the following services:
a. Search b. Mobile advertising c. Video sharing (like Youtube) d. TV packages e. home security and automation f. video games g. social h. expand iCloud to the business sector
6. The CEO needs to be upbeat and have tremendous energy. He must be confident, almost dilusional. He needs to be supremely confident about Apple's ability to grow and that excitement and confidence needs to bleed through every time he speaks. Cook is like a dead man talking. So dead. So boring.
Remember it always starts at the top. It always starts with the leader. If the leader lead the rest will follow. Cook is not a good leader for Apple at this point. Cook has done a good job running the supply chain but now the emphasize needs to be on services just as much as hardware. Twice under Cook's leadership Apple has lost $250 billion in market capitalization during strong Bull markets. No other company in the history of man has done that even ONCE. Yet Cook was able to do that TWICE in 3 years. A change is needed.
If no change is made Apple will slowly lag and be nothing like the company Steve Jobs left to the world.
Apple isn't great at communicating, that's a given; even in Jobs day, their were secretive and well you didn't know what the hell they were doing 90% of the time. People don't seem to remember Apple had massive dips during Job's second term. So, I'm not all in that people trusted Jobs all that much; he's been lionized a lot after his death.
Google didn't do that great here, they aren't that great at communicating either, they've had a massive numbers of misteps and well they've got less earnings and I'll posit that they're not likely to ever get Apple like earnings anytime soon, you can quote me on that one.
What they do though is publicize almost all their internal development. If 90% of what Apple works on never see light of day, well it is likely the case also for Google (90% won't be commercial products); yet many investors seem to think that's not the case; using what I call dot.com logic.
Apple can't really fight that; there is no point. They could do the most boneheaded thing in the world, like say buy Tesla, and their stock would shoot up 50% within a month. That's how wall street is.
Apple has a great ability to create solid revenue streams in new products. The Apple TV within 2 years will turn into a powerhouse inside the home; the Apple watch will likely sell 50M a year within 2-3 years (20B in revenue and 5-6B in profits (1/3 what Google does now BTW). That would be a colossal success by all measures. But, hey were already making 55-60B a year in profit so 1B more isn't so hot...
I'm going to go on the limb and say Apple TV and Watch sales profits will be more than half Google current profit within 4 years. Does that afford them an extra 250B on valuation... No.... They are "doomed".
And yes, for most investing, for many, is close to a mix of gambling and a pure skills game (who pushes the buttons, passed the ball, fastest) (sic).
How I know? Because I've talked to so many in the last 30 years; probably over ten thousand. Started investing in 1984-1985. I'm that old :-). And I'm talking of people with lots of money in the market (my peers in that regard). They all "know" how everything works; they're all god damn geniuses... (sic). I'm not, as are most people,
I can be sure that almost every stock they were touting as the second coming will have tanked, while I'm getting my good steady long term gains. Hype going down and up is the worst investment advice possible and more than 80% of high PE companies I've ever seen have not been worth it except if your horizon is short and ready to trade a lot.
So, I'm beyond cynical about analysts and well, most of my fellow "investors"; they're not really investors in the traditional sense of that word.
Just an example here (and I know business sales are not an apple strong suit but we have apple iPhones / laptops - as much apple as we can (which isn't much since few to none support software deployments on it in my industry)). We also have a ton of computers mostly dells but now buying mostly surfaces.
For a small medical clinic in the last 4 years here's the percentages we spent for the big 5 tech companies (we buy domestic big name as much as possible): (Intel is higher then shown since it's in the other computers but that's hard to break out!)
Just an example here (and I know business sales are not an apple strong suit but we have apple iPhones / laptops - as much apple as we can (which isn't much since few to none support software deployments on it in my industry)). We also have a ton of computers mostly dells but now buying mostly surfaces.
For a small medical clinic in the last 4 years here's the percentages we spent for the big 5 tech companies (we buy domestic big name as much as possible): (Intel is higher then shown since it's in the other computers but that's hard to break out!)
google
microsoft
apple
dell
intel
73%
14%
5%
5%
3%
Oh, you just happened to have those numbers aggregated and broken out that way? How awesome!
Comments
You should reread what I wrote. I was talking about what their CEOs talk about.
big pile of cash saved for rainy days is exactly what bothers market and investors.
See, for example, Post #27 above.
And maybe, eventually, the Apple Watch will be compelling (well, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy.
What investors want is a roadmap of what Apple is working on, but that isn't going to happen, and that is 100% of the culture that Steve left. So Tim's statements that "we have great new products in the pipeline" isn't going to assuage investors either. At the same time, the siren song of advertising and services seems to hold sway, so let that drive the world's economy for awhile. Let Google and Facebook prosper from advertising if that is to be.
Seems to be what the analysts want.
Let's see how did it work for Apple:
- the biggest buyback in history made no impact on company valuation, actually, it was negative
- the biggest purchase in Apple's history brought no revolutionary changes in music business, it actually brought a lot of integration issues and Music is generally percieved as not really good app for the purpose
- despite rising research expenditures they are falling in percentage and are among the lowest in industry which gives pretty much good idea that there's in no "next big thing" up the sleeve.
This is all very clear to market and that's why they see pile of cash as liability and not as an asset. Value? Buffet? Well, he is advocating invenstments in value, yes. He invested hugely again in IBM when it was valued 200.... nuff said...
I mean, really, Apple has a much more cohesive message in terms of OS, HW, App, Content Distribution, and Related Services then almost any other company out there, and it's pretty clear to anyone with a small percentage of a brain.
It's funny, everyone was agog over Facebook's 1.5 billion active users. Cook noted that Apple surpassed the 1 billion active user mark in the last quarter. Which company has a far greater product, content, and service mix to monetize that with deliverable benefits, vs selling ads or (in the future) monetizing videos? Which company has the far more compelling and deep Venn diagram of revenue and profitability?
Apple was RIGHT to point out the growing services ecosystem. Especially with such high custsat ratings, (presuming they maintain this), the revenue growth potential from content, apps, internet services and more is incredible.
What's the average spend of those billion users per quarter for Apple? $1? $2? And over time?
And this is not considering HW.
Most of the replies in the comments section are funny.
Apple is Dooomed! No innovation(while other companies sit on their ass waiting for Apple)
3D touch is mutitouch 2.0. You know, the tech %95 of phones in the world now use. Let's call it a gimmick and spec bumps from iKnockoffs "innovation"!
"They are doing nothing."
AppleWatch? Was that not last year?
I don't know what you expect Apple to do. Wall Street is schizo when it comes to Apple, and always has been. In my opinion, their expectations are insane. Apple is selling an unbelievable amount of product and is massively profitable. Growth cannot continue at exponential levels forever...there are only so many people in the world capable of buy a smartphone. 1.2 billion smartphones were shipped last year, or 1/7th of the world's population. Should Apple start a breeding program?
And as I'm typing this I noticed the CNN anchor babe on my TV is wearing a Hermés double tour Apple Watch.
People don't seem to remember Apple had massive dips during Job's second term. So, I'm not all in that people trusted Jobs all that much; he's been lionized a lot after his death.
Google didn't do that great here, they aren't that great at communicating either, they've had a massive numbers of misteps and well they've got less earnings and I'll posit that they're not likely to ever get Apple like earnings anytime soon, you can quote me on that one.
What they do though is publicize almost all their internal development. If 90% of what Apple works on never see light of day, well it is likely the case also for Google (90% won't be commercial products); yet many investors seem to think that's not the case; using what I call dot.com logic.
Apple can't really fight that; there is no point. They could do the most boneheaded thing in the world, like say buy Tesla, and their stock would shoot up 50% within a month. That's how wall street is.
Apple has a great ability to create solid revenue streams in new products. The Apple TV within 2 years will turn into a powerhouse inside the home; the Apple watch will likely sell 50M a year within 2-3 years (20B in revenue and 5-6B in profits (1/3 what Google does now BTW). That would be a colossal success by all measures. But, hey were already making 55-60B a year in profit so 1B more isn't so hot...
I'm going to go on the limb and say Apple TV and Watch sales profits will be more than half Google current profit within 4 years. Does that afford them an extra 250B on valuation... No.... They are "doomed".
And yes, for most investing, for many, is close to a mix of gambling and a pure skills game (who pushes the buttons, passed the ball, fastest) (sic).
How I know? Because I've talked to so many in the last 30 years; probably over ten thousand. Started investing in 1984-1985. I'm that old :-).
And I'm talking of people with lots of money in the market (my peers in that regard).
They all "know" how everything works; they're all god damn geniuses... (sic). I'm not, as are most people,
I can be sure that almost every stock they were touting as the second coming will have tanked, while I'm getting my good steady long term gains.
Hype going down and up is the worst investment advice possible and more than 80% of high PE companies I've ever seen have not been worth it except if your horizon is short and ready to trade a lot.
So, I'm beyond cynical about analysts and well, most of my fellow "investors"; they're not really investors in the traditional sense of that word.
For a small medical clinic in the last 4 years here's the percentages we spent for the big 5 tech companies (we buy domestic big name as much as possible): (Intel is higher then shown since it's in the other computers but that's hard to break out!)