The pics thread

Dak have you read anything about US drugs policy? You might find it quite interesting to read some of the left literature on it.
 
The market is already rather disconnected from fundamentals, but yeah. Apple is going to die once the cult factor fades.

It already died about 35%. They've got a giant pile of cash, something like $140B. That, their brand value, and whatever switching costs they create with their cloud/app services, all support a higher floor on the stock price imo. I feel like the breed of big tech companies competing today are all masters of ripping off each other's ideas to stay competitive.
 
In 8 months you've made $3600? that's $112 per week. Not a bad little side thing I suppose yeah. £78.80 (In sterling) per week would be enough for me to live on in a cheap apartment.

I'd want at least $1000/month to live comfortably, maybe ~$750 if i found a really cheap apartment. I plan to start looking for work by the end of the year, but i have a notion to attempt retirement by the age of 35.
 
zabu of nΩd;10599478 said:
It already died about 35%. They've got a giant pile of cash, something like $140B. That, their brand value, and whatever switching costs they create with their cloud/app services, all support a higher floor on the stock price imo. I feel like the breed of big tech companies competing today are all masters of ripping off each other's ideas to stay competitive.

Nothing wrong with imitation. Apple is trying to maintain it's business by suing everyone in sight. Cash is irrelevant if it's heavily outweighed by debt/normal outlays.

Like I said, they will die once the cult factor (brand value) fades. I don't see them recovering from the death of Jobs.
 
I'm pretty sure Apple has zero debt, and they were the first company to have success with the modern smartphone afaik so it makes sense that they would build up a patent defense (not that the current warring/trolling over patents isn't ridiculous in general).
 
There may not be much faith in a resurgence if that were to happen, since Steve Jobs appears to have been single-handedly responsible for Apple's turnaround after his 1986-1997 absence.


edit: my return on investment since September may actually be much closer to the 13% in the S&P, because i neglected to include two stocks i sold after a really fast profit, Hewlett Packard and First Solar. Going back before September it probably sucks again though, because i learned most of what i know now over that summer and was doing a lot of stupid shit before then.
 
zabu of nΩd;10599520 said:
There may not be much faith in a resurgence if that were to happen, since Steve Jobs appears to have been single-handedly responsible for Apple's turnaround after his 1986-1997 absence.

Exactly. Apple has shown no indication that it has any legitimate plan or direction without Jobs at the helm.
 
Apple TVs could be cool, if that is in fact what they're working on. I imagine Jobs oversaw the development of a few new designs that are awaiting the right moment for implementation. Existing Apple devices have a major following still, and it's not all about brand image -- they've had a unique edge in user-friendliness for a long time, and the software that ships with Macs has been widely embraced by art students/schools. Apple's app offerings have wide appeal with casual gamers and kids too young for consoles -- they really got a head start over Google and Microsoft in supporting that developer ecosystem. There's a number of things differentiating their products from competitors.
 
zabu of nΩd;10599392 said:
It's been about 60k since i quit my job a year ago, due to expenses balancing out my gains for the most part. I don't have the best tracking of my returns, but since beginning of September i've gotten approximately a 6% return on investment, compared to 13% for the S&P 500 :D

That's pretty cool. I've been averaging 50% lately with how well the markets doing. Usually am in the 20-30% range.

Though, I'm not good at working with smaller portfolios either.
 
zabu of nΩd;10599563 said:
Apple TVs could be cool, if that is in fact what they're working on. I imagine Jobs oversaw the development of a few new designs that are awaiting the right moment for implementation. Existing Apple devices have a major following still, and it's not all about brand image -- they've had a unique edge in user-friendliness for a long time, and the software that ships with Macs has been widely embraced by art students/schools. Apple's app offerings have wide appeal with casual gamers and kids too young for consoles -- they really got a head start over Google and Microsoft in supporting that developer ecosystem. There's a number of things differentiating their products from competitors.

It seems that whenever a founding leader dies, companies generally die with them. Apple's shares were losing value at a small rate when Jobs was still alive, and I sold mine the day after he died. Really glad I did.
 
When/how was it losing value? Their net income and equity both rose dramatically in every year since at least 2003.

Also which cases of defunct businesses do you think are a close analogy to Apple?
 
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