Shorted LABL in the morning and going long AMZN. Both are swingers.

not arbitrary at all. how come no hitter in baseball averages .400 over a career yet some can hit at that rate for over 50 games? because that was there peak. Similarly in econ, no companies can make abnormal profits for that long before standard competition comes and brings the profits down to a more normal level. Hence my statement about real monopolies being the only exception. So saying it wont do it because no other companies have held the level isnt arbitrary. and 590 billion is pretty close to 500 billion in 2000 adjusted for inflation.

LABL short at $22.90, AMZN long at $181.24.

Will keep a close eye on LABL in the next few days and see if it can break $21.70. If it bounces off, I'll cover immediately if not might be some more profit room.

Forgot to say but sold SSYS and sold HOG both yesterday.

About Dreamworks, is today's 12% drop a good buying opportunity for a long-term buyer? And why or why not?

lol

obviously =]

What about someone like XOM who if it hadn't returned hundreds of billions of dollars to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, would have a market cap well in excess of 500 or 590 (they returned ~130 billion just in the fiscal years 2007-2010)??

AAPL doesn't return cash to shareholders like XOM does so shouldn't they be allowed to break the magic .400 batting average analogy in market cap, whatever you deem it to be, for non monopoly companies?

Wait till technicals improve. Just looking at charts, it'll likely fall into the $16s soon.

love how savant posts all these fundamental reasons hes shorting JCP and then just day trades it for a quick scalp.

You're gambling, no use in even putting your thesis in the posts, just use this forum as your notebook

Yea, you really need to hold for quite a while (months) if you're going to be basing your trading decisions on fundamentals.

I use the daily charts and 99% of my trades are all technical based. I also never hold through earnings and always liquidate the day of. Average holding period is probably 1-2 weeks for each security.

I'm a shareholder and willing to own more but I am not buying more here. If I didn't own any and was looking to be a long term buyer I would look at today as a place to start the position, but I wouldn't take a full position (unless your portfolio is fairly small and buying a position in say 2-4 buys as the price declines would result in too much fees to be worth it).

I think the negatives on the company are more short term in nature (next 18 months let's say) whereas the real visible catalysts for price appreciation are likely to take longer to materialize (3+ years. Talking about their china JV here and whatever the (hopefully close to as profitable as the old DVD market was) next generation of aftermarket content consumption ends up looking like.).

I'm hoping the market gives me a chance to buy some more at a valuation of $1.25 billion.

exxons return of assets is 10%, apples is north of 25%. long term thats not possible in hardware for a huge company unless you have a monopoly.

and yes apple could in theory get to that size if they never paid anything out ever but I said it wouldnt do it in a year. if they build up a cash horde of 400 billion over the next 20 years then they may trade for 600 billion. but thats a really bad return on capital. Any company in the world could grow to any size by never paying out, but its a bad return on capital. which goes back to my roa point earlier, that apple wont see those returns for infinity, and at some point standard ecnonomic theory kicks in. xom makes huge amounts but they have a huge asset base they are making it off of so the returns are only a bit above normal.

also, you're confusing that 400 batting average analogy for marketcap when i was talking about returns on investment, or roa

so a 20% return on investment in one year isn't possible cuz nobody can bat 400 consistently?

its possible I just think its unlikely and am using history to show that past a certain size it doesnt seem to happen/ that is the point where the magic stops.

What about inflation? Can't a market cap grow above some number on that premise alone?

It seems that they'll eventually be pressured into paying shareholders tho right?

I'm trying to offer a contribution to the thread by stating the reasons why I think it's overall direction was down. Others can use the info as they see fit. Personally, I think a thoughtful post is more useful to the thread than the guy who posts "in xxx at $xx.xx."

I thought my technical execution was pretty well timed on entering the short.

The exit might of been a little panicked (I was planning on cashing out around the fifty dma), however the general market had broke resistance that put doubts in my head and I'll be out of pocket Tomorrow and didn't want risk. When I feel confused I usually get out and protect my money. If I knew market was going to pull back 5 min after covering I would of hung in there.

how about the fact that every handset company in history has eventually cratered?

all of them dominated for a few years until a new competitor emerged with something better.

the iphone killed the ipod and the ipad is basically just the iphone with a bigger screen. macbooks are differentiated but they aren't really the driver here. you may disagree with me but i look at aapl as a $500 billion comp with basically 2 really similar products. cloud, itunes, all that other stuff is really built upon having the handset and the tablet.

the question is it possible to come out with a better phone and tablet? what does the iphone not do? obviously if i had the answer to this, id be a billionaire so i'll defer. when i look at the market today, i see a lot of droid phones that look like bad apple rip offs.

maybe apple just nailed it and whatever minor short comings they have will just be fixed by the upgrade cycle.

so this post seems to be taking the form of i have no clue and thats really my conclusion on the future of apple. what i do know is that at 15x-20x i'd be short it all day. you just can't trade at a premium to the market with the product breadth and business that apple operates.

I already mentioned this when talking about companies that had done it in the past on an inflation adjusted basis. They were all mega monopolies in the late 1800's

as i see it, this is the only good bearish argument on AAPL. but they're just doing it so much better than any other handset company (NOK, RIMM, whoever) ever did imo. i don't expect to hold forever; if someone releases a product that i think is a threat, i'll sell it all very fast. maybe it'll be too late, but at this point i still love this stock.

imo technology changes too fast

i dont see how apple maintains their dominant competitive advantage over the future. it would be unprecedented. Its possible but very difficult.

VIFL got a nice bump yesterday.