Apple (AAPL): Macro Short?

07/27/08 10:24AM EDT
Precisely 2 years ago, AAPL was trading at $50/share and plenty of doubt surrounded the company’s ability to continue to deliver product momentum. On Friday, the stock closed at $162/share (19x trailing cash flow!), and we’re looking at a company that is rightly the apple of every investors qualitative eye – pardon the pun.

I am very weary of letting our analysts hang their hats on qualitative thesis’. Research Edge was built on quantifying everything we can. From a quantitative factor perspective, AAPL is finally breaking down. We saw $189/share tested and tried on 3 separate occasions since mid May (May 13th, May 15th, and June 5th). Today, the stock is -14% lower, and it’s in a very precarious position, both fundamentally and technically.

From a fundamental modeling perspective, six months from now the Street will be forced to look a what was the best revenue quarter that a high growth consumer product company can deliver. Year over year growth will slow materially, and the momentum community will be out of this stock faster than they got in. Apple’s management gets this, and as our friend, Michelle Leder, at ‘Footnoted.Org’ called out this week, they are already preemptively calling out “macro” as the reason.

We’ll let you pull up the 10Q and read it, but Michelle’s posting on this does it for you just the same: “While some people continue to debate whether or not we’re actually in a recession, Apple went a step further in the 10Q it filed… using stark new language to describe the state of the economy in its risk factors section.”

This isn’t Apple’s fault. This is called macro – and it matters. Apple’s shareholder’s list is decorated with all of the top mutual funds in the world, and short interest is remarkably low at 2.2% of the float. Shorting Apple is far from consensus, and if it breaks down closing below $160.34, the institutional selling will look far from over.
KM
(Chart courtesy of stockcharts.com)
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