Apple’s stock took a hit Wednesday after a report that company executives had made up details on stock-option administration documents to guarantee profits for certain executives. The report said falsified documents were unearthed by Apple’s internal probe into the matter. Earlier this year, Apple said it had identified concerns with two former executives as a result of its investigation into its accounting for stock options, and the report names former chief financial officer Fred Anderson and departed general counsel Nancy Heinen as the subject of the probe, although it’s unclear whether they are the ones thought to have falsified the documents.
Probably the sure sign of a top in AAPL was the previously bearish Motley Fool writer, who a few weeks ago became convinced that because of various well publicized forecasts coming true, Apple would go onward and upward forever.
It was nearly as infallible an indicator as Jobs being named man of the year, or Apple appearing on the cover of Business Week.
The news is neither here nor there in itself, its just that curiously these items appear, and tend to have great impact, just past the peak. Another classic indicator was the appearance of triumphalism about the stock price on Infinte Loop. The inevitable precursor to a crash!
Ironists will also note with satisfaction the scheduled appearance from the wings of Piper Jaffray, like some kind of awful cliched Greek chorus, explaining that this really doesn’t matter. No, it doesn’t, of course it doesn’t in itself. Its just a symptom. We are in distribution phase, have been for some time, and gravity is calling louder every day.
Apple will be a great buy again, probably after it either fails to introduce a mobile phone, or does introduce it and has a disaster, and when the fans are discreetly silent and depressed, and don’t mention the stock price in public. How low?
Who knows. Well below 50, that’s for sure.
Lol, you’re probably right.
Another thing that may slowly undermine some wunderbar tech stocks is what to do about the now-ageing generation of founders. They can’t go on forever and by some business standards they’re old men now. It will be some time before Microsoft manage to exit the Gates/Ballmer years, though they seem to have successors in place. Apple haven’t even started down that road so far as we know. Even the most powerful reality distortion field spiced with a hefty dose of Zen cannot stop time.
The Yahoo! Finance boards are that way –>>
I don’t know how these news about Apple stocks are related with news regarding OSes…
Plese delete this unuseful thread and next time advice us of new improvements into Apple OS and MacOS X topics.
Sincerely I find these news unrelated and unuseful with OSNews.
With respect,
Raffaele
I’m getting SICK of posts like yours. From now on, any such post will be modded down and locked, as we have explained time and time again why we often publish news that is not directly operating system related.
GET OVER IT.
Hehehe… I’m sorry… I just had to!
Enron, HP, Sony, Apple…
Corporate-america-is-full-of-A-Grade-criminals Shock!
Business as usual.
@twenex
Can’t trust companies.
Can’t trust governments.
Can’t trust the people.
We’re all doomed.
Speak for yourself. At least you can trust me.
@arielb
You wouldn’t be a person working for a corporation that is doing business with the government?
All I will say is, I’m arielb and I am here to help you.
well… you can trust you.
I trust my teeth and they bite my tongue (Russian proverb).
dont you DARE campare this options back dated BS with what ENRON did! they are not even in the same ball park!
I like Apple, but my loyalty to the brand doesn’t extend to breathlessly tracking its stock price.
Who f*cking cares, other than the stockholders?
Agreed, but fact is, Apple is more than a manufacturer of products they buy, to many of its customers.
They also identify closely with the company’s fortunes, including stock market developments. For example, look at the euphoric reaction to the essentially meaningless news that the market cap of Apple had exceeded that of Dell. Read the Infinite Loop article on Ars which starts out considering a prospective customer move from Windows to Mac, but then spends a third or more of its space celebrating the latest stock price rise and contrasting the performance of the stock with that of MS stock. Look at the delirious interest in the cell phone possibility.
For a large proportion, at least of the vocal, its as much Team Apple as it is MacOS.
iPods will go the way of the Edsel and the Do-Do bird. Then where will Apple be? Who wants to put money down that Steve Jobs wears false teeth and walks with a cane? Never mind the usual scumbag top execs who falsify financial info: dime a dozen they are. I used to be big into Macs. Now, what am I gonna do? FreeBSD? Ubuntu? Vista? The whole Apple situation is so bad, I have nothing even remotely worthwhile to say about it.
” I have nothing even remotely worthwhile to say about it.”
yup…. you got that right!
they were down in the morning, but overall, actually went up today (a smidgen)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=1d&c=
Seriously, if you’re in the market for some stocks, buy some Apple the next time some bad news along these lines is announced. Except for these executive shenanigans (which are all too common; do they teach these techniques in business school?), they seem to be doing things right as a business (releasing products that customers want at a price they’re willing to pay).
Consult your broker first though, ’cause I don’t play the stocks, and I’m an Apple fan (upgrading to OS X machines instead of Vista machines, thank you).
– chrish
beleive it or not… that is a great strategy, spacificly with AAPL. which has turned out to be a very volital stock. it is unbeleiveable how up and donw AAPL can be on rumors and opinion! if you watch it for a few months… you can start seeing paterns of up swings and down swings! right now… the stock is getting beat up….. but that will change when we get back to the real matter… and that is GROWTH! Apple is going to announce there best quarter yet (in January) and the elivator will be back up! then some time afterwards…. it will dip again because some analyst will say somthing like…. iPod sales tank… iTunes sales down…. then the stock will drop like a rock…. then apple will announce more GROWTH in iPod and iTunes… and up it goes again!
while the bad news is fresh. You Apple critics kill me, ya realy do. So you think it’s all over, doom and gloom?
Damn good thing I run Ubuntu, and don’t own any stock in Apple, or I’d be jumping out of my building right now! (ok that was lame , I live on the ground floor!!).
Man the crap that get’s pasted on here, and don’t tell me this wasn’t news meant to start a flame war, because everybody loves this stuff.
Happy Holidays, and here’s to some informative, interesting, new articles in the new year!!
ps: It’s not a bad site over all, but it seems like the negative news stuff is filtering into the site waayy to much. I love hearing about new technology, just ain’t into bashing so much.
how is this osnews worthy…
guys, eugenia, this is really not worthy…
And why not? Apple Computer Corporation happens to make a high-profile line of personal computers AND the second most popular Operating System for personal computers.
EDIT: Puncturalization
Edited 2006-12-28 01:28
That’s like me saying I was in a race with one other guy and came in second place…
It’d be more relevant if there were many operating systems that were popular..
The lack of a mobile phone and end of quarter profit skimming is what lowered the stock. This latest diatribe of accounting issues is soon to be history.
The stock will be over 90 when the next quarterly earnings and the restated earnings are released.
MWSF will expound upon Leopard and various other products.
“The lack of a mobile phone and end of quarter profit skimming is what lowered the stock. This latest diatribe of accounting issues is soon to be history.
The stock will be over 90 when the next quarterly earnings and the restated earnings are released. “
It is already back to pre-wednesday levels, in less than 24 hours…
We’ll see Friday. Isn’t that when the restated financials are filed with the SEC? Should be quite interesting.
http://www.law.com/jsp/ca/PubArticleCA.jsp?id=1166782011784
Edited 2006-12-28 16:12
“Well below 50, that’s for sure.”
You must be a very rich man since you know what the stock market will do ‘for sure’.
Guys,
London’s FT is running this story:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/801e1b82-9605-11db-9976-0000779e2340.html
Interesting !!!
Isn’t that what business is all about these days (making a short-term cash grab as quickly as possible with no time for unimportant things like laws or long-term corporate health)?
How come I’m not surprised? This is typical behavior from corporate moguls.
Quite frankly, if this was a mom & pop shop, they’d throw the book at these people but they won’t. It is business as usual with these types of corporate moguls.
This is not like Whitewater and HP where some counsel or investigator is going to actually find any wrong doing. If at the most there is a conviction or punishment, it will certainly be a slap on the wrist.
What they should do with this type of activity is to strip them of their stock and assets and see how they like being screwed.