Verizon OK But Growth Slowing Slightly

Verizon (VZ) reported a pretty solid quarter and made constructive — if not detailed — comments about 2008. The market is focusing on some slight misses in key metrics, but I think that has more to do with the suddenly negative sentiment toward the telcos than with the quarter. EPS, adjusted for one-time items, of […]

Missing iPhones Found at Sundance

I’ve been reading up on the phenomenon of the missing iPhones and the only thing I can conclude is they might all have been at Sundance. Honestly, it seemed every line we were standing in had multiple iPhones in use. I know that speaks more to where Apple has mindshare than anything else, but I […]

Sundance Wrap Before Reality Returns

If you love movies and have never been to Sundance I highly recommend it. This was my first visit and I found an incredibly well organized and orchestrated festival. Pulling it off is no easy task. There are seven venues with nine screens in Park City alone plus additional showings in Salt Lake City and […]

Slow Sales At Sundance

I got to Sundance yesterday and caught my first movie. I am visiting a good friend in Salt Lake City so I won’t be spending full time at the festival until today. I hope to catch 3-4 films on Saturday and Sunday before heading back to Chicago. Even though I’ve missed some good stock market […]

More Thoughts on Apple

In my Apple (AAPL) earnings summary on Tuesday, I said there were enough issues to prevent the stock from staging a quick rebound. Those issues don’t justify the type of decline we saw yesterday (down big intraday), but the stock is overowned, and as Jim Cramer pointed out, the big money is rotating away from […]

Mortgage Refinancings a Bullish Development

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening traveling from Chicago to Salt Lake City on my way to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City. In the morning, I chatted with my mortgage broker. He told me he was getting flooded with calls but not a lot of action yet. He said he many clients that […]

Apple: Not Good Enough For This Stock

I am not going to recap all the numbers from Apple as you can read that elsewhere. The December quarter was very good but not without issues. Mac and iPod sales came in a little below aggressive estimates. This was easily made up by better than expected ASPs. A bigger issue will be that US […]

Best Case For Apple

I’ll be covering Apple’s earnings call after the close. Here is my preview. I decided to look at aggressive assumptions to see where a best case scenario might be for the December quarter. Since the stock needs both a substantial beat and decent guidance I wanted to see what the beat might look like. Here […]

Apple 1Q08 Preview

Another Apple earnings report comes after the close today, so time for lots more overanalysis and outsized volatility in the usually volatile shares. Estimates have been rising as the quarter went along since it became apparent that Mac sales were booming. News from MacWorld that Leopard and iPhone sales were ahead of expectations in the […]

Special Market Comment

Overseas markets continued to fall sharply last night in Asia and today in Europe. Two day losses in many markets while the US was closed for the Martin Luther King holiday reached 10% or more. US futures have been trading down between 4% and 7% since Sunday night. In response to what can only be […]