I’m a contrarian. It’s my observation that when everyone thinks one thing, the real, outsized opportunity is the other.
But what happens when everyone thinks one thing… but the market is thinking quite another?
Take AAPL. From a low of around $212 a month ago, it’s powered its way to almost $290. More impressively, just about 12% from its all-time high.
Heck, if you went way out on a limb, you could probably say that’s even within a normal trading range. “Has the whole world stopped? We didn’t notice!”
But all through this romp upwards, most Apple analysts have been decidedly negative.
Out of about 30 analyst moves in the last two months, a whopping 80% of them were downgrades.
To put this in context, Intel analysts were split 50/50 between upgrades and downgrades going into their earnings last Thursday. So, relatively speaking, 80/20 to the negative side is a big spread.
As important, some of the AAPL downgrades were double downgrades… that is, a second price-target cut within just a few weeks.
So what’s the contrarian play here? Go against analysts and buy? Or go against the market and short?
I think you go against the market. That’s the bigger “everyone” in this case.
Going against the market also seems, well, more rational to me. I love Apple but I think the current market enthusiasm seems excessive given our uncertain environment: Uncertain when lock-downs will end… uncertain that people will want to congregate at Apple Stores when they do… uncertain when we’ll see a vaccine… uncertain that a 2nd, or even 3rd, inflection wave may hit… and so on.
This uncertain environment is awesome for a select number of businesses… say Amazon and Netflix… but could be less kind to a (mostly) consumer hardware company like Apple. Not that I’m not saying people can live without their iPhones — they can’t — but I am saying they may be less quick to buy $1,000 upgrades.
No doubt, what makes going against Apple scary is it’s one of a handful of companies that has the business levers to manage its way around a crisis like this. And they are notorious for pulling rabbits-out-of-hats.
Still, a V-shaped recovery? THE ENTIRE WORLD HAS SHUT DOWN. Does a (mostly) consumer hardware company merit trading anywhere near an all-time high? Does the market merit trading anywhere near an all-time high? Somewhere in this equation there has to be some p-a-i-n.
I’m not the first person to say there’s a good chance we’ll see another downdraft. So if Apple does surprise to the upside, AAPL could still take a tumble along with the rest of the market. Nice to have a backup scenario in this situation.
P.S. A couple of other quick AAPL trading comments:
- While Apple has done a terrific job moving into services, these are still only about 20% of company’s revenues. Meaning, Apple is still mostly a hardware company.
- Intel, also a hardware company, has had a similar run-up as AAPL. Last Thursday INTC blew away their numbers, benefitting from the Coronavirus “work at home” situation. Apparently, with mobile being such a huge focus the last few years, home desktop machines have been ignored and needed updating.
- In contrast, you don’t need to upgrade your iPhone to work at home.
- One last data point: Even though Intel blew out numbers, INTC finished flat for the day.
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