Ted Goranson - Personal Blog

I connect with Apple in several ways. I am a consumer of their products and services. There is not much novel to say in that department other than my concern with privacy; apart from all else, I believe Apple’s competition will dissolve when people discover the tradeoffs they have made.

I am also engaged with others as an Apple shareholder. Until this month, my faith in their stock price has rewarded me, allowing me to follow my passions without employment. That streak has ended, in part because the seed corn has been eaten. But more important than that is the irrational depression that public analysts have imposed on the price.

I write this the day (22 Jun 15) after Apple reported their quarterly sales. Sales are up, way up; iPhone is crushing Android; business in China is amazing; they can’t make watches fast enough; innovative iPhone and iPad designs have entered production; the IBM alliance is huge in the enterprise already. Signs of whole new product categories are appearing. They have over $200B in unallocated, liquid cash.

But today the stock price is profoundly down. The superficial reason seems to again be that some folks wild-ass guessed the numbers would be different and so Apple ‘missed’ the numbers.

A slightly deeper but still superficial reason is that stock prices are based on the crudest of metrics, long obsolete for disrupters. Buyers of stock guess what future buyers will think of those metrics. What’s missing in all this is what this post is about. The people we trust to understand corporations for us don’t understand Apple. It isn’t just interesting, it is essential to understand what they are trying to do; it could be our future.