Thursday – Nasdaq Gets and Applectomy – $50Bn Removed Overnight

AAPL's earnings were a disappointment and the stock plunged 10% overnight (not reflected yet in Dave Fry's chart).  Of course, first it went up 3% during the day but we won't split hairs, their earnings failed to excite but did nothing to scare us off – especially considering that this quarter had one less week than last year's Q4 (fiscal Q1 for AAPL).  That's a 7% handicap to overcome.  

Nonetheless, AAPL managed to squeeze out $13Bn in profits in 13 weeks and since they've also done a lot of share buy-backs this year, those earnings represented a whopping $13.81 per what is now (briefly, I think) a $465 share.  That's just for a quarter.  AMZN, by comparison, HOPES to earn 0.27 per $268 share this Q and MAYBE, if all goes well, $1.73 for the year or about 2 weeks of AAPLs earnings for the whole year.  And, for that, you are expected to pay what is now much more than 50% of AAPL's stock price.  

IBM was just rewarded for reporting $15.25 in earnings per $200 share for the entire year and that's in-line with XOM, who earns $9 per $90 share and GE, who make $1.80 per $22 share.  NFLX jumped 40% overnight because they earned 26 CENTS for the quarter.  Now a share of NFLX is $140 for earning what AAPL does EVERY 12 HOURS.

You can read the rest of my commentary on AAPL from my tweets (with special links my Member Chat commentary) here and here.  As AAPL was (and still is) my One Trade for 2013 and the only one that's still cheap as both TSLA and CIM have really taken off since I mentioned them last Tuesday – it's only fair to share our ongoing adjustments with the public as well.  This is a good time to remind people that last year's "One Trade", BAC, also had a nice pullback before really taking off later in the year.  

As I said on TV last Tuesday: "AAPL can go down to $400 from here ($485 that day) but, if you are a long-term investor, so what?"  So the entry on the One Trade is still valid and, if anything, today should be a good day to sell puts as an initial entry on new positions but, as I noted in the pre-market Alert…

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