jonl

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jonl
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  • Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway buys $1B of Apple stock

    jonljonl
    sog35 said:
    baconstang said:
    msuberly:  Some other perspective: Berkshire added $1.25B of Phillips 66 stock last quarter...where is the headline of that?

    Probably in some Oil biz rag.  Why would it be here?
    Its news because Buffett never invests in tech companies
    Except for IBM, which has been a 5 year loser for him. His PMs, however, invested in INTC for a year back in 2011 or thereabouts, getting out with a 25% profit before it dropped 30%, and they've now invested in AAPL. The big difference is that Buffet himself bought IBM and wants to hold it forever, actually hoping its price would decrease for years and years so he could buy more, with that and the buyback increasing the percentage of the target $20 EPS he owns, a target which never came true for him. His PMs, on the other hand, sold out of their INTC after a year. Who knows what they want to do with AAPL? All we know is Buffet has confirmed it was the PMs who bought AAPL, not him. We don't know if Berkshire wants it be a forever hold or a quick flip.
    jackansi

  • Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway buys $1B of Apple stock

    jonljonl
    bkkcanuck said:
    jonl said:
    We're talking about tech investments here, something Buffet has repeatedly said he doesn't get into, because he doesn't understand tech. Berkshire held $INTC only for around one year, not Buffet's preferred "forever" timeframe; many attributed it to Buffet reasserting control after a PM bought the stock. As for IBM, Buffet repeatedly pumped its buyback and $20 per share target, and he continued long after it became clear to everyone else that it wasn't going to happen. He's just digging in his heels now. He can afford to, and he's hoping that Watson and the other research stuff will pan out, the cloud business will expand, etc, just like everyone else who made the mistake of following him into it.
    I worked as a consultant during the peak of the .com boom and was asked repeatedly why I did not jump to one of the high fliers who I was contracted with -- and my answer was simple.... I could not understand the business of most of those companies.  It was we do this, that and the other thing and then money will magically appear in the future.  I also remember Warren Buffet saying the reason why he did not invest in many of those companies ( and why he was not hurt as badly during the bust) was because he could not understand the business of those companies.  Trillions of dollars went into and down the drain during the bust because there was no concept of where they were going to make money.  There is a vast difference between a lot of tech companies and manufacturers (hardware and software) who are tech companies.   I just keep on coming back to -- what is so hard to understand about a phone manufacturer?  I think (cough cough) even Warren Buffet can understand a company like Apple, Microsoft or Intel....  so the next step is ... does he think that any of those companies are undervalued and have good long-term prospects for growth (in addition to ongoing income)? 

    Do you really think Warren Buffet is so stupid that he can not understand companies like Apple?  Do you think he considers Apple to be this hard to understand business?  The tech industry is littered with lots of companies that are really hard to understand from a business standpoint.... (more are the latter unfortunately -- which is why there is such a larger percent that go under).
    I'm talking about what he's said and done. His PMs were behind the short-lived Intel stake, and I would guess they're behind the small Apple stake. I will continue to believe this until Buffet comments on it, as he has done since the beginning with IBM.

    ETA:

    I just read some news.

    Berkshire Bought Apple Stock, But Warren Buffett Didn’t

    "Berkshire revealed an Apple stake worth nearly $1 billion early Monday, as part of Berkshire’s quarterly disclosure of its stock holdings. Mr. Buffett, Berkshire’s chairman and chief executive, confirmed in an email that he was not the one who added the shares to Berkshire’s massive equity portfolio. Mr. Buffett is famously averse to investing in tech companies, and has specifically ruled out investing in Apple before. But in recent years, he has added two former hedge-fund managers,  Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, to Berkshire’s investing team. They’ve shown a willingness to wade into corners of the market that Mr. Buffett himself won’t touch, including the tech sector."

    Based on this quote, the author might have cribbed my first post in this thread.

    "Perhaps fans of Apple and its stock should be glad that this is not Mr. Buffett’s stock pick. The last time Mr. Buffett made a big move into the tech sector, he took a huge stake in International Business Machines It’s been one of Berkshire’s worst performers."

    What did I say 45 minutes before the article came out?

    "So far, it does not seem like the $IBM stake, which Buffet himself talked about from the start, and in retrospect, he was bamboozled by IBM's buyback and promise of $20 EPS by 2018 or whatever the date was. Heh, it might be a plus that Buffet isn't behind it."

    :lol:

    cali

  • Apple confirms reports of iTunes music deletion issue, 'safeguards' coming next week

    jonljonl
    rogifan_new said:
    Thank god I rarely use iTunes. POS software.
    iTunes is really quite good for local music. I've always disabled all the Internet-related features, and I manage my own metadata with Mp3tag. It's fast with my large library and has never touched my files.
    pulseimagesbaconstangpscooter63

  • Apple Inc. shares reach ex-dividend as it gears up to distribute $2.9 billion to shareholders

    jonljonl
    Rayz2016 said:

    It could be that Apple's primary concern is serving its customers rather than its investors. Apple's share price has zero impact on the company's ability to deliver. But if their customers vanish…
    Wrong. The stock price matters greatly to employees whose compensation is (partly) in the form of stock.

    delreyjones

  • Apple Inc. shares reach ex-dividend as it gears up to distribute $2.9 billion to shareholders

    jonljonl
    stompy said:
    ... but investors must have had settled ownership of the company's stock by Monday May 9 in order to qualify.
    This is incorrect. Again. I guess the good news is this only happens once per quarter. ;)

    Apple gets the list of registered owners on the record date and pays them a dividend.
    AI, you're confused because it takes a transaction 3 business days to settle (in this case, to become the registered owner).

    buy     before ex-dividend + hold at least until ex-dividend arrives = dividends
    The part you quoted is sort of correct, but you're right, it's again an overall inaccurate, misleading article, but good for a quarterly lol. I say "sort of" because it implies investors have to actively "settle ownership," which is wrong.

    Here's the deal. AAPL went  ex-dividend on May 5. You needed to have owned the stock through the end of May 4 to collect the dividend. People who purchased the stock on May 5 were excluded from the dividend, hence the term, "ex-dividend". Those who were eligible for the dividend were free to sell it on May 5; they will still get the dividend.

    To be fair, Apple itself reports only the settlement date, not the ex-dividend date, which is rather stupid, because you have to get out a calendar, count backwards, and account for weekends and holidays to turn it into usable information.

    http://investor.apple.com/dividends.cfm

    Still no excuse for AI to incorrectly use the term "ex-dividend" quarter after quarter in these articles.
    radarthekatSpamSandwich