joogabah

palomine said:

Wall Street press writes about Apple in the screwy way that it does because it is taking advantage of the hype surrounding the stock. It's an innovative company so of course there will be some wild speculation as to what they are up to next. 

What is galling to me as an investor is the craven use of AAPL as a profit stopgap for all the rest of the market.  These firms use the stock as a reliable income generator by having the analysts in their pocket seed some stories positive or negative to influence the price direction. It is pretty easy I would guess, and a huge amount of that goes on. Why wouldn't they? Apple is a solid as hell company with a great following. I don't guess they think anything they write could actually hurt the company, only the stock price.

I remember back in 2009 maybe earlier, Cramer was on his show and scarcely ever mentioned the stock, except to say this  "I think there is going to be a heavy lid on that price going forward". Wow. The heavy lid indeed. There are now so many games being played with the stock that I despair it will ever be priced like the success that it is. 

Another thing while I'm ranting. The P/E is at ~11 or so at $99 a share. Wasn't it about the same a couple years ago? Did the company not grow at all?  Yet Apple made nearly 30% more profit each year. I know there are different ways pricing is figured and I know it takes a lot to move the needle on this much profit, but really! 30% more profit is 30% more profit whatever the starting number was.  When the stock hit $134 the p/e was ~18. If it went up to that again they would probably say it was at 25 or something.  Yeah I know, do the math. Something ain't right. 

Wall Street is USING AAPL as their main squeeze while they fart around, basically. In 2015 after back to back blowout numbers the analysts had something else planned, so they spun all that bs we saw. Then they arbitrarily decided the iPhone 7 was going to be 'the one' that sets the stock up for a rise. Probably, especially since they say so. Except, that now there are so many different gameplans and so many players, it's just a mess and now some say it will be iPhone 8. Which leads to a lousy stock price for what seems like forever. Anyone who did not buy early like me has sure been slapped around. 

What at a strong company Apple is anyway, to survive all this bad news. Is it possible for analysts to ruin its reputation?

NemWan said:

roake said:

Personally, I don't want some hairy guy wearing a dress in the bathroom with my 6-year-old daughter.

North Carolina politicians seem oblivious to the high quality of modern gender reassignment procedures and what the implications are: North Carolina law now requires a person who was biologically female at birth, who now identifies as male, and looks convincingly male, following surgeries and hormone therapies, to use the same bathroom as your daughter. Your daughter won't see a guy wearing a dress in the bathroom, she'll just see a guy in there, dressed as a guy — a guy who lost the choice to use the men's room because he has XX chromosomes. Do you expect that trans people who had "unnoticeable" surgery should just secretly break the law and use the bathroom they look like they belong in, because they probably won't get caught? That's going against the law. Is the law just supposed to apply to trans people who don't look "normal"?

This commenter highlights what is central to the pro-trans argument.  Surgically transform gay people into heterosexuals.  It is not possible for a man to become a woman or vice versa.  That is just a refusal of reality.   And “woman” as a construct is not something to desire to emulate.  It is ritualized submission to men.  Dolling oneself up into a sexual object is not “liberating”.  Quite the opposite.  It is reducing oneself to an hors d’oeuvre for the consumption of men who feel entitled to a little bit of everybody.  All of the characteristically feminine artifacts are means and methods to attract dominating men.  That’s why lesbians appear unfeminine.  That’s why people think all gay men want to be f**d up the a** and have no self respect (since society didn’t assign them the subordinate gender, why would they perform it willingly?)

Gender is socially constructed but it is not individually chosen.  Masculinity is assigned to biological males and femininity is assigned to biological females with no consideration of what they want.  Choosing the submissive gender because one cannot adequately perform the dominating gender does nothing to dismantle the gender system.  It is a heterosexual cop out and a denial of the possibility of radical equality.  It also means the literal castration of gay people, which is blithely accepted without comment by the poster above.

Masculinity and Femininity are both equally problematic.  That was the original message of gay liberation.  It was ok to not conform.  It wasn't about switching teams and cutting off your d**k.

I'm gay, in the original sense of the word.  And I'm not afraid to make controversial statements to illiberal people who seem to want to silence opinions they don't like.  It doesn't occur to them that ideas don't exist in their fully developed state but are living and dynamic, always in motion and the dialog is what is important, so silencing any opinion just slows the progression of thought.