Put Away the Prozac, Apple's Just Fine

Dell's profit margin is near 5%, one fifth that of Apple. Nokia does not have a profit margin unless you count a negative number. Poor Amazon, the company as I have written is overvalued many times, displays a profit margin that makes Dell look good. Amazon's profit margin is less than 1% (negative based on last quarter's dismal results). Right, I know it's not dismal as long as you're willing to forget about that pesky term "return on equity."

Even with Apple's relatively large (more than 40% for those keeping track) return on equity, I will admit life as an Apple bull I was "partly cloudy" as I watched Apple break below the largely followed 200 day moving average. As if by magic, each price tick lower ushered in another in a string of bearish articles and I continued to scratch my head.

Knowing that emotion rules the short term, and logic rules the long term, I was content to watch the circus play out and maintained my bullish stance. In fairness, it wasn't that hard regardless of the numbers. Experienced traders know that the type of price break Apple had through the key 200 day moving average almost always gets retested relatively soon.

Sure enough, here we are three weeks later and Apple is trading near the 200 day moving average of $599. The conversation has markedly changed, although I have not changed my opinion. I recently wrote "anything under $600 is a gift" and you should take it if you can.

If someone is willing to give you the gift of Apple for under $600, take it and consider it an early holiday present. It's hard enough to make money in this market, so when given a chance to receive more value than what you paid, take it.

As many know, value is what you receive, and the price is what you pay. They often have seemingly little resemblance to each other, albeit they are "loosely" correlated. A few days ago Apple traded for less than $530, and on Tuesday it closed at about $585. Did the value of Apple really increase 10% in a few short days? Of course not, only the price changed, not the value of the company.

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