Sell Apple stocks now? Or wait?

Fiftyshades

Voyager2002 wrote: »

think twice before sinking their entire fortune into Apple:

You have helped me make my mind up to sell my entire position in Apple, but should I wait until Iphone5 is released and a spike up? I can see it going down soon after people realise the Iphone5 is not even as good as the Galaxy S3.

gadgetmind

Fiftyshades wrote: »

So you have no gold just paper?

Not even that, just magnetic domains on some distant hard disk.

grey_gym_sock

gadgetmind wrote: »

Not even that, just magnetic domains on some distant hard disk.

don't you find that a problem when you feel the urge to exclaim: "mine, mine, it's all mine!" followed by an evil laugh?

gadgetmind

grey_gym_sock wrote: »

followed by an evil laugh?

Muhahahahahaha!

DiggerUK

Fiftyshades wrote: »

.....Gold also looks high to me, ........how would one go about investing just under £10K in gold?

This Telegraph piece has a good precis of ways to invest, don't spend too much time reading the opening article, unless you want to giggle a bit.
..._

sabretoothtigger

buy on the rumour sell on the news, pretty much eternally good advice.

Gold looks expensive to absolutely everyone who hasnt won the lottery.
Its only in context its actually cheap, like the BOE balance sheet showing 100x leverage.
If you sell sterling to buy gold this becomes a much more balanced perspective

evilplan

Fiftyshades wrote: »

"Apple's iPhone ranks seventh in the Chinese smartphone market according to a survey published by IHS iSuppli, a market research firm based in the United States.

Now behind Samsung, Nokia, Lenovo, Coolpad, Huawei and ZTE,"

Even behind ZTE, just shows the Iphone is going downhill in the most important market in the world.

I think the Moneyweek article is being needlessly contrarian.

As for Apple being behind ZTE, I really don't think you're thinking clearly.

When did Apple launch in China? Why? How is Apple marketed in China? What licences does it have? What networks is it on? Does it have the capability to get onto more popular networks? Why are its products performing poorly there?

To simply comment that Apple is now behind others is to ignore any knowledge that anyone might have about the Chinese market. Which is exactly what you've done. You're basing your opinion on an article with no facts and figures in it. This isn't the way to treat your investments. You're assuming that Apple products are performing badly in China because of Apple, and that this tells us something about the global market. How? What does it tell us? It doesn't tell us anything unless we can answer questions like "does Apple even have wide distribution in China, and are its products suffering simply because it hasn't get got access to the biggest mobile networks - and if so, can it get that access?"

The truth is, Apple has a massive distance to travel before it exhausts its *target market*, which is wealthy consumers in wealthy markets. That ignores the possibility of Apple changing its model in order to tap into the Chinese market. Or the Indian market. In the US and UK, it reduces the prices of older models to attract a less wealthy customer. That's a market it hasn't really exploited yet. Similarly, with the possibility of advances in mobile, in TV, in content distribution, you can't say for certain that Apple's experience in China represents anything.

Similarly, Apple has immense possibilities in the up-sell side of things. I'm one of those people who bought an ipod and was impressed enough to buy an iphone, and who then loved the simplicity and so bought a macbook. Apple knows that the success of some of its products could spark a big increase in sales of its higher-end products.

The biggest difficulty Apple faces isn't cheaper competitors - the mobile market has been flooded with cheap competitors for years, and you can buy Android phones for £40 now.

Obviously there will come a time when it's no longer right to *buy* Apple. But there's nothing in the fundamentals, in the market or in the world that says you should sell your entire investment.

Apple's biggest threat is itself. Part of its share price premium is because it is perceived as such a value-added company. It could lose this very quickly and become perceived as just another consumer electronics company, and I think there's a real possibility of this. A number of tactical mistakes have been made by Apple recently that could easily take the shine off the company. That's actually my worry. I think Steve Jobs added a lot of perceived value to the company, and Apple needs to dazzle the market semi-regularly in order to keep that value.

Also, you're asking if you should wait til the launch of the next iphone before selling. Have you checked the share prices after each product launch, to see what sort of bounce there is? Shouldn't you also be looking at what happens to its share price at each quarterly earnings call? What provides the bigger bump - a product launch or earnings reports? If you don't know, then you shouldn't really be judging a new product as the reason to sell or not to sell.

If I remember right, there wasn't an immediate price bump after the iphone 4s was launched. The market seemed a tad disappointed in the phone (which again speaks to my point about the shine coming off Apple). And the share price dropped at the last earnings call, despite massive profits.

I'm going to sell my Apple shares at some point. But it will be after a long period of little price/dividend growth, when I see more potential in better value shares. There's little chance of Apple's share price suffering a major decline unless there's a market crash, so if I just base my decision on Apple and the consumer electronics market, it will be unlikely that I risk *losing* my money - the risk is that I won't get so much capital gain in the future.

gkerr4

there's a lot of talk like the only product that apple make is the iPhone!

sure it's a big player, but what about the other products - imac, macbook, ipad, iPods, apple tv - not to mention the surrounding eco-systems like itunes and app store!

apple is much much more than just the creator of the iphone and, for me at least, it's the way they keep creating new markets in new product lines - look at the ipad - changed the market for laptops by creating a whole new genre of persona computer. Look forward to the anticipated new ipad mini, the apple television (maybe) and revised product lines in september to show the real value.

just my thoughts