So how did that huge win for Apple in San Jose work out?

Blimey! $390!

Only another $50 to go and the price will be the same as when you wrote a huge essay two years ago detailing a whole raft of reasons as to why AAPL were going down the pan and you were "Massively" short at (off the top of my head) $340.

Well done sir!

Ouch. Did that hurt Melly?

Gin, I don't know you from a bar of soap, but I've used bars of soaps that were considerably more intelligent than you.

Instead of crying in your milk about you apple losses, try writing these people to complain about it, they are they ones that sucked a brainless mug like you in, not me.


Morgan Stanley - Katy Huberty - http://www.forbes.com/sites/thestreet/2012/03/15/how-apples-stock-could-...

Piper Jaffray - Gene Munster - http://www.businessinsider.com/analyst-here-are-the-10-reasons-why-apple...

Greenlight Capital - David Einhorn - http://www.benzinga.com/news/13/02/3314241/david-einhorn-still-thinks-ap...

Bulish Cross - Andy Zaky - http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/16/analysis-apple-stock-headed-fo...

Seeking Alpha - Brian Nichols - http://seekingalpha.com/article/444351-apple-can-reach-1-000-by-2013

Topeka - Brian White - http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-24/topekas-cartoon-analyst-cuts-hi...

You aren't laughing and you haven't done faux outrage but you have reached for bluster. I'd say that man must have hit you squarely in the jewels.

Still hurting, eh?













































It will take you a while

The only thing hurting is my ribs.

You can run but you can't hide. Why don't you address the issue the man raises? Did you advise shorting Apple at a higher price than it is currently? No foam flecked rants required. No Don King diversionary nonsense required. Just a simple yes or no is required.

Take one more run, it will make you feel better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m7EXfoofEXE#!

Your silence on the substantive issue speaks volumes. All I'm doing is holding up the mirror. Is it my fault that when you stand in front of it there is nothing revealed?

I think I've done enough reeling you in. I've thoroughly enjoyed watching you scream in anguish on here but………. it's time for the kill.

So, pull your trousers down, and try not to scream this much. Same goes for that brainless bar of soap called gin.

And let me begin by saying that, based on this line you posted "Did you advise shorting Apple at a higher price than it is currently? " you haven't the faintest idea what shorting is, what it's all about or how it's done. But then again, we all knew you are all fluff and no substance.

Here's the post that announced the AAPL short:

Menelaus    19 Apr 11 20:51 
It has nothing to do with volume. NASDAQ is a weighted index (unlike the DOW) with AAPL a dominant 20+pc weight. NASDAQ announced a rebalancing of the index reducing AAPL's weight to almost half of that. Combine this defensive action by NASDAQ with the Steve Jobs health situation, supply chain interruptions hitting earnings in Q4 and the overall US and global economy slipping into another recession and all the arrows are pointing SOUTH, not NORTH. When Americans are faced with a choice of filling their SUV's with petrol or buying an ipad, I think I know which they'll choose.  Good luck those staying long AAPL. As I stated before I'm MASSIVELY short.

Here's an update post:

Menelaus    13 Jun 11 12:01 

I went short AAPL at around $342 in April. I loaded up short positions right after their last earnings statement with the stock shooting to $350+ when I believed we hit top for the year. Perhaps you weren't reading my posts carefully enough. It closed at $325+ Friday. I would throw that calculator you are using away and buy a new one if a drop from $350 to $325 works out to a 3-4pc drop.

Here's closing the trade at a profit:

Menelaus    17 Jun 11 16:44 
Closed positions.

AAPL $323 shorted on three different occasions at a weighted average at  about $348  (7pc decline)
NFLX $247 shorted at about $273 (9.5pc decline)


Here's confirmation by another poster (not exactly a friend of mine on here) validating not only the AAPL short but also NFLX:

Whippet    17 Jun 11 18:04 
I definitely remember melly saying he was shorting apple near the top, it was trading somewhere between $330-$355 when he said he had done it, it is up to all of you if you believe he got a price of $348, I don't really care. Also the NFLX was called correctly as well.





No, no, no, I'm not done spanking you, I saved the best for last. Check what AAPL was trading at when I put this MASSIVE post up, then check the price now. Then eat the vomit you've been throwing on this thread because no one else will.

How does it taste?


Menelaus     12 Nov 12 08:33 
For all those fanboys who bought into the Apple infallibility and the "aapl is going to the moon" mantra, but are now left scratching their heads wondering what's going on, this post is for you.

Let's first look at where we've been:

Apple of course needs no introduction. Most all us either own, or have had our lifestyles enhanced by the company's products (or lookalikes) one way or the other. The Apple stock no doubt had all the necessary ingredients to make it a great success, once the company gained its footing in the consumer electronics market, with Steve Jobs leading the transformation from a computer company with a niche appeal to techno geeks and graphic designers to one with a mass market appeal.  And what a transformation it was. The company under Steve Jobs seemed like an unending conveyor belt of innovative leading edge products delivered to the market with flair, it had amazing profit margins and a cult-like devotion to the status symbol brand by its customers. The logo became iconic. Every financial analyst was bullish on Apple, many publishing predictions of the share price, at this pace, going over $1,000 soon and Apple reaching a market value of over a $ trillion. But did all this explain the stunning growth of this stock? No, it didn't. This did.

Apple became a safe heaven and momentum play for hedge funds. The FED was conjuring money out of thin air which was handing out to its friends at no cost. Those who got their hands on it first looked for a "safe" place to pile in and profit. USG Treasuries were one but with yields range bound that didn't offer much opportunity but for the most risk averse. Apple did. And every one piled in, banks, primary dealers, brokerage houses and just about every hedge fund on the planet into the most overcrowded momentum play going on the market. Buying aapl became an "one-way" trade. This works fine as long as capital investment keeps flowing in and momentum keeps driving the stock price up, even when dark clouds appear on the horizon. But when the risk assessment changes, when sentiment can no longer ignore the dark clouds, things change to the downside very quickly.

Apple went on an amazing run this year, supported by an attractive 12/1 P/E and over $100 Big ones (B as in billion) in cash, investors piled in sending the stock price from about $413 at the start of the year, up almost in a straight line, to an all time high of about $705 in late September (it was $100/share in early 2009). Which essentially meant that the company added about $270bn to its market value in a mere nine months. Investor confidence in Apple's invisibility was reaching a climax, sentiment was driving everything.

What could go wrong?

An earnings miss, badly managed public relations efforts  in relation to Foxconn and the litigation against Samsung, a lackluster iPhone5 launch and the tide had quickly turned.  The launch of the iPhone5 also debunked the myth that Steve Jobs had left a whole bunch of new products in the pipeline waiting to be introduced to the market. No new product appeared on the visible horizon and the iPhone was no longer the best smartphone on the market; there's reason why it's currently being out-sold by Samsung's Galaxy S3 - consumers voted with their money.  It was released to the market without what Steve Jobs always managed to successfully do when launching new products. Differentiate them from the competition's by including a new leading edge feature that no one else had, and delivered to the consumer with Apple style and flair. On top of that, the launch of the mini iPad was starting to look like a strategic blunder. Yes, they would sell a pile of them, but at what profit margin, how many of those sales would strictly be cannibalization of their regular high margin iPad sales and at what cost to the brand with some analysts now essentially labeling Apple a…..toy manufacturer, something that would have been unthinkable during Steve Job's reign or even just a few short weeks ago.

A massive $170bn of shareholder wealth vanished into thin air in a matter of a few weeks. Just to put this in perspective, this market cap loss is about the same as the entire market cap of Johnson & Johnson, an international healthcare and consumer products behemoth, going to ZERO in a matter of weeks. Simply unthinkable


What went wrong:

The numbers didn't add up: If we examine the product launches we've seen in 2012, the sales forecast of the devices launched, the 1-2 years of planned obsolesce (more on that later), the average selling price of the device and assuming a very healthy 40pc gross profit margin (we don't know for sure), then Apple investors would expect somewhere between $30-35bn in  pre-tax profit. The $270bn increase in valuation therefore can hardly be justified based on those numbers. Which can only lead to the conclusion that the Apple momentum and sentiment investors were pricing in what they perceived to be an unlimited ability to bring new innovative products to the market with new consumers continuing to line up to buy and existing users to upgrade. In most cash flow analysis models, in order to justify a $700+ share price, Apple would have to hit a mind boggling $3.5 trillion in revenue over the next ten years (for context, last year's revenue totaled $108bn), assuming their operating margin stayed at the current high levels, a very unlikely assumption.

The fanboys are becoming disillusioned: Apple's business model is based on almost obsessive control of the entire ecosystem combined with a strategy of providing customers a constant need to upgrade or buy new products as well as subscribe to services. This works well as long as you have the best mouse trap on the market and keep innovating to bring out new great mouse traps. It doesn't work so well, when your loyal customer base is now starting to perceive you as just another greedy corporation taking them for a ride because the "new" products are just marginal evolutionary improvements from the one they are replacing with revolutionary ground breaking improvements hard to come by. This point was driven home with the recent replacement of the dock on the new iPhone and iPads which basically rendered all devices that used to attach to the old style dock obsolete. The introduction of iPad4, largely obscured by the launch of the mini iPad the same day, coming so quickly after the launch of the 3 version was also not well received by their devoted customers. The fanboys were finally clueing in that ever shorter product cycles, in other words ever shorter planned obsolesce, may be good for Apple profits but not so good for their pocket books.

The "cool" of the brand is fading: It all started with stories in the press around the awful working conditions at Foxconn leading to worker suicides, layered on top of more negative publicity revolving around the antitrust probe (and subsequent fines) of trying to control ebook prices.  Also, secretly GPS-tracking iPhone users was decidedly not cool. Remarkably however, the turning point in how the company was perceived by the public was Apple's own legal win over Samsung for patent infringements delivered in a courthouse just a stone throw from their headquarters by a sympathetic Silicon Valley jury and a judge that should have disqualified herself from presiding over the case in the first place. In the blink of an eye, the totally casual, trend setting, Steve Job's gang from Cupertino, who brought us all these glitzy "must have" products, had evidently switched from looking cool in Agave jeans and Ray Ban shades to wearing banker pin-stripped suits and now wouldn't talk to anyone unless a lawyer was standing by their side.  Apple stopped innovating and started litigating, with consumers (and their competitors) around the planet stunned to find out that round corners can indeed be patented. Apple was correctly perceived by the public as blocking competition which inevitably leads to better prices for consumers. Combine this with trying to block sales of the Galaxy 3 when clearly that smartphone was gaining favour among American consumers and attitudes towards Apple were changing. Apple was starting to look profoundly uncool.

Margin compression: Patent lawsuits notwithstanding, Apple's success was just to stunning to be ignored by competitors. Their technology was just too successful not to be copied (it was), or altered slightly to get around patent infringement issues, or just simply improved on. Building their products in China ensured that the "copying" would take place all that much quicker. Margin compression is unavoidable, especially as others close the gap in performance and the shine on the Apple brand loses some of its shine. Apple willingly jumping into lower margin market territory with the mini iPad merely confirms their acceptance of future lower operating margins.

Technicals were breaking down: Once the stock started it's downward trend, key support levels (200MDA, 50MDA) were breached and any rallies failed to brake through neck lines. The result was more selling momentum strictly based on the tale the charts were telling.

An assortment of other factors: a strong advertising campaign by Samsung exploiting the very uninspiring iPhone5 release, experts and consumers alike disappointed with the new iOS6 operating system including the blunder of introducing a map application that they knew clearly wasn't up to par and other more minor factors were all contributing to Apple's misfortunes. The straws were piling on the camel's back, slowly but surely.

Where do we go from here:

Apple will be around for a long time making good products, but not necessarily the iconic leading edge "thinking out of the box" products that we got used to seeing from them. They will be very relevant but no longer infallible. Nothing stays the same, especially their leadership which has recently openly displayed signs of fracturing leading to several high profile terminations. The competition doesn't stay the same either and neither do fickle consumer tastes. It all amounts to a great deal of risk. No one can say for certain where the stock price will end up, too many volatile variables to consider and weigh properly. My view is that aapl will trade in the mid 400s next year and after bouncing around a bit settle trading in the mid 400s  range for some time. Those late comers to the party who bought around the top will have to endure a lot of pain. Apple is an epic success story but if the markets have proven anything over time is that no company should be considered invisible.



P.S. Could aapl trade over $1,000 some day? Count on it, but just not for the reasons every sell-side Wall Street wh0re was spewing. What they didn't tell you is that a loaf of bread will be ten quid when that happens.

That's a lot of wind you got rid of there Melly. Could it not have been condensed to this:

I shorted Apple in the mid 300's range in 2011 but predicted it would be in the mid 400's range in 2012.

Would that be an accurate reflection of your state of mind? If so how does that taste and how burnt are your fingers?

So, how did it taste?

Answer the question Melly. Did I precis accurately what it took you so long to write and if not why not?

How did it taste?

On a more serious note, not only you are a disturbed f/k, you are stupid as yeast as well. All you are doing now is putting your vast ignorance on display.....not that that has ever bothered you before.

I guess if I posted that I go long on a given trade when the markets open only to reverse my position and go short a mere few minutes later, IT WOULD REALLY MAKE YOUR PEA SIZED BRAIN EXPLODE.

Stick to things you understand, you know, things that have "no explanation". You're just not cut out for this financial stuff.


























In the meantime, just keep eating your vomit.

Menelaus
19 Apr 13 11:03
Joined:
03 Feb 05
| Topic/replies: 3,356 | Blogger: Menelaus's blog
Gin, I don't know you from a bar of soap, but I've used bars of soaps that were considerably more intelligent than you.

Instead of crying in your milk about you apple losses, try writing these people to complain about it, they are they ones that sucked a brainless mug like you in, not me.Wink



You're right, you don't know me from a bar of soap. If you did, you would probably know that I have never owned, traded, shorted or invested in AAPL shares in any way......ever.

Thanks for the essay though

You're right, you don't know me from a bar of soap. If you did, you would probably know that I have never owned, traded, shorted or invested in AAPL shares in any way......ever.


Sorry, mate, my bad. I guess the brilliant dissertations you put up here every time one of my posts on Apple appears, and the fact that you didn't know the likelihood that a short trade executed nearly two years ago to still be open is precisely ZERO, threw me off. You had Apple large investor, 10 figure trading account kind of chap, written all over you.

Thanks for the essay though

You're welcome, what are friends for?

Melly

If I thought someone was stupid they wouldn't get the time of day off me. The fact that you continue to fight a desperate rearguard action tells me so much more.

You need to look up the definition of "rearguard" and make friends with reality one of these days. Because to me this is what you just posted, and it makes you look more pathetic than the road kill you really are:

"In a few days, you will all witness something that can only be considered very beautiful against the Coalition forces. That, I assure you. We managed to chop off their rotten heads. There are only two American tanks in Baghdad. We are winning!"

Mohammed Saeed a-Sahaf - Iraqi Minister of Information


And this doesn't tell anyone much more, it tells everyone all they want to know.

I can't hear you when you shout over your shoulder as you sprint away like that. Come closer Melly. What have you got to lose? 

Your dignity?

At this point, what can one say other than you seem to be in yet another complete meltdown.

I'd be lying if I said I'm not enjoying it.