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My answer is simple. I am long the stock. I am also an anaLlst and on fundamentals, Apple is by far one of the most premium choice companies that can be purchased. Is there a level of opinion there?, ya. But, the vast majority is pure fact based on growth, cash flow, and an extremely solid balance sheet. So, why am I telling zach to shut up? Because, nothing pisses me off more than to watch this guy use unearned influence on the uninformed investor in order to achieve his own selfish objective. What do you think? You think this guy is all about helping others? Sorry man, it just ain't so. Look at every one of his headlines... He clearly has a goal, and it ain't to help you.
Good Luck.
Unfortunately your fanboy attitude is getting the better of you, it clouds your vision. In this market, letting your emotions influence your judgement is a disadvantage.
You arrogant small time snake oil salesmen couldn't get respect anywhere except from stroking you own egos with bull. Bet you all live on credit and haven't ever saved a dime. I'd short you in a minute and forever.
I vote for ALL of the "Candidate" scapegoats above for all the reasons you mentioned especially removing the uptick rule and no transparency or oversight with the Hedge Funds. The uptick rule was put in way back in 1938 after the crash of 1937 which no one remembers and only recently removed BECAUSE in my opinion the SEC could not enforce it with all the Hedge Funds violating it. The real MAIN PROBLEM is the almost $500 TRILLION yes TRILLION derivatives market of CDO's etc that are so convoluted that NO ONE really know who owns what anymore.
My hope is that Paulson has a plan to provide ONLY a market to allow unwinding these things and selling them off gradually at a fraction of their original value by the holders themselves so the taxpayer is not really on the hook for it all. This could take years, but it will allow the markets to continue and slowly become stable again. Some people will lose a lot (jobs, money, home, etc), and I just hope it is mostly the folks that KNEW they were doing it that lose the most. In the meantime we do NOT need tax increases or CAP Gains increases like the Democrats have promised in their platform and speeches.
Al
Well said. Cdo's themselves are not a bad thing and helped provide liquidity to the GSEs for years. The problem was that cdo's became soooo easy to get done and the fees they paid to wall street were very nice. As long as there was a steady supply of mortgage paper that could be securitized, cdo's could be issued. In steps the likes of Countrywide Mortgage. The mission...write mortgages. So now everybody and their busboy can buy a house. Prices are driven up, teaser rates reset and....wahlah...defaults and declines in home prices.
So sentiment is dealt a big blow. In steps guys like Zach to manipulate that sentiment at the expense of others.
The problem last week was a financial panic. Closest culprit on your list is The Banks. Bad Lending + Leverage == current situation.
For a company like AAPL, with circa $25/share in the bank and no debt... a market panic is an opportunity to go long. I did so at $128. A nice little addition to my retirement account.
You make a profit by selling higher than you bought at. Unless you're margined, it matters a whit what the price does in between. If you care what a stock does next month or next quarter, you are not an investor.
If short sellers were driving down AAPL last week (panicked sellers and a buyers' strike is more likely), they did a service--shorting a stock of a company printing money with around 20% of its value in cash. And someday they have to cover.
Companies with the cash and productivity and flexibility of Apple can survive depressions.
"I personally think that speculators and all the tools they have available have transformed the stock market in a business that can be easily manipulated and, more in general, in something more similar to a Las Vegas crap table than to a place where to put your savings.
I believe there is a huge difference between speculators and investors and it is too bad that they have to operate in the same market. Speculators just bet, investors don't because you don't bet using your savings.
The best thing for the stock market would be that shares are bought with real money without any tool for leverage other than the credit of each individual investor. If a company doesn't perform as expected its value will decrease and the shareholder may sell his investment in it taking the inevitable loss. If a company goes well the value of the shares will grow because more investors would like to buy them. This is free market. A market that has real substance, shares that are really "priced to perfection" and investors that reap benefits or suffer losses in a acceptable and orderly way.
Speculators should have no place in this market and without them the market will not be less free but more.
What you call free market is free only to manipulators.
You favor the capability of shorting: selling shares you don't own but that you borrow from who actually owns them. This borrowing is made without the individual investor that owns the shares knows about that. If he knew he will almost certainly not make the shares available for loan because it is against his best interest because their value will decrease. I think shares should not be available to short sellers unless the owner of the shares agrees to the loan and gets a price for it."
To answer your question I agree with you that is the Government (not just the current one) that let things degenerate to this point.
But among the many corrective actions that are necessary there is also the need to separate the investors market from the speculators market.
Just because you can do something does not mean it is a good idea. Zach, find your moral compass.
Speculation is fine, it's what makes markets liquid. Leverage is fine when used wisely. Shorting is fine, it's what allows us to hedge.
Macfan, stop be a self rightous troll. If you hate sack so much go somewhere else, it's sacks sight after all. Man up and start your own super altrulistic fun site I'f you such the egoless analyst.
No hatred here at all. Let's keep on track.
Like I said, maybe his stuff has been hashed out in the past few weeks and I've missed it and if that is so, sorry. But otherwise the Zack bashing seems really rather weird. I hate Rush Limbaugh but I don't waste my time listening to him or writing to his blog or whatever he has. When people go after a site owner like zack it seems to me the poster is bored and is just filling their free time or get a rush out of being provocative. They guise this as altrulism but never really offer salvation. If I am off base, i appologize but I gotta calls them as I see them.
as for u RT, you are a failure if you didn't read any of my posts and see the care and thought I put into creating a reasonable, valid, highly educated response. I gave examples, methods, history and time. If you can counter my arguments using the same thoughtfulness then I would applaude you (or anybody else for that matter), but when the responses are simplistic Cramerisms I call bullshit. Somebody reads Rule One Investing and they think they have the Market cornered.
I actually enjoy zack's writing and it would be pretty lame for me to find value in his insight and just stand buy and let people slander him. Anybody who sits but silently is pretty spineless in my opinion. Just as you feel some how justified in your comments, I too feel justified in mine. The difference is I back my shit up.
And Zach...I will be honest, as much as Zach's headlines piss me off, I do sometimes enjoy these posts. But when those headlines appear, I am forced to think Zach is serving someone other than his readers. Zach, you claim I can't handle it when someone is giving am objective view of the markets. In fact, I am all for that. If you are objective, please explain the "shock and awe" headlines that more often than not have a negative slant.
But I would take exception to the Shock and Awe characterization. Although the headlines can be irreverent, they are not nearly as bad as others I have seen. The only thing that gets me is that sometimes people don't even read the blog post, they simply respond to the headline. But that's the exception, not the rule.
No worries, if the market is efficient (and I believe over time it is), things will unfold as they should (despite all the noise created by folks with their own agendas).
What you seem to be accusing me of, is crafting headlines with an attempt to manipulate the stock price, or the direction it may go. I have no such power. I simply provide my analysis. If the headlines reflect a negative slant, then that's because I think the current environment is negative, not that I want it to be negative. I would much prefer that everything was bullish, it's so much easier to analyze and trade in a bullish environment.
But the week point in your answer is when you state "...millions use margin every day and pay back their debts fine." As you know, the mess we are in is because somebody is absolutely not able to pay back their debts. Forget if it is about margins, loans, collaterals or what have you. When solid cash is not behind actions, you walk on thin ice.
It just seems to me that this crisis have really brought out the crazy in all of us. I hate to say it but if anybody had been trading these past couple of months you were unreasonably greedy. I called going to cash after Apple failed to break 170 2 months ago. Yeah I missed the big 5 day rally but so what? I missed all this crap too. I've been pure cash because as I've stated this is only the beginning of this mess and until a clear direction is established then it is a casino with no free drinks. Expect oil to get to 140 again and stabilize from the diluted dollar.