It’s hard to say anything bad about Q4 at Apple (ticker:AAPL) considering the environment. Sales were up 5.8% year over year, margins were flat, net income was flat and diluted EPS was flat. Considering the fact that the world is ending they seem to be holding up fairly well. As usual, they sand bagged the guidance so it should come as no surprise that they blew out the numbers, but the stock was unjustly slammed after the Jobs health news broke last week.
Unfortunately, Apple is a niche company so you can’t read too much into it. Much like the IBM quarter this likely doesn’t mean anything for the rest of the market. It just means that the analysts are still foolish enough to fall for management’s tricks every single quarter.
A better gauge of the overall health of the market will come tomorrow and Friday when we get numbers from MSFT & GE.
Mr. Roche is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Discipline Funds.Discipline Funds is a low fee financial advisory firm with a focus on helping people be more disciplined with their finances.
He is also the author of Pragmatic Capitalism: What Every Investor Needs to Understand About Money and Finance, Understanding the Modern Monetary System and Understanding Modern Portfolio Construction.