Update on Apple Suppliers: 'Mind Your Stops!'

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Everyone who owns Apple (AAPL) shares has been celebrating as the share price hit another all-time high on Tuesday above $701. Congratulations are in order for the brave believers like Jim Cramer.

Apple, according to Piper Jaffray and its research team led by Gene Munster, has the ability to sell six to 10 million iPhone 5s during this coming weekend's launch. That would equate to a 100% year-over-year growth from Apple's iPhone 4S launch. Piper thinks Apple will issue a press release on Monday regarding sales over the weekend.

The other happy group of investors are those who've been buying shares of three well-run companies that supply AAPL with the smart-chips and other essential technologies to make the iPhone and the iPad work so famously.

Broadcom (BRCM), which recently peaked on Sept. 14 at $37 a share, Qualcomm (QCOM) and Cirrus Logic (CRUS) have all seen their share price move up very nicely in the past few months. The six-month comparison chart below helps us see that CRUS has outperformed BRCM and QCOM during this rebound period.

BRCM data by YCharts

CRUS, with its $2.84 billion market cap, is a "fabless" semiconductor company that develops and sells high-precision analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for audio and energy markets worldwide. The company also offers analog and mixed-signal audio converter and audio digital signal processor (DSP) products, which include analog-to-digital converters (ADCs); digital-to-analog converters (DACs); microchips for integrating ADCs and DACs into an IC; digital interface ICs; volume controls; and digital amplifiers, as well as audio DSPs for consumer electronics applications.

Though it has no debt and almost $167 million of total cash (in its most recent quarter), CRUS saw its earnings per share fall almost 25% in the quarter ending June 30. This is most likely no cause for alarm, but let it serve to remind not only CRUS shareholders but also BRCM and QCOM shareholders that now is a good time to tighten our stop losses or our trailing stop losses.

What, you're not even sure what a trailing stop loss is and you're reluctant to place such an order with your brokerage firm?

While I'm not a big fan of entering stop-loss, stop-limit or trailing stop-loss orders with my broker, I do feel it's essential to protect your gains and your principal by using them. A stop loss is an order placed with a broker to sell a security when it reaches a certain price. A trailing stop loss is a stop-loss price set at some fixed percentage below the market price.

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