Category Archives: apple

After Hours Most Active for May 18, 2016 : MSFT, EPD, ETE, BX, BAC, BAX, CSCO, WPZ, SYMC, TLT, COWN, QQQ

The NASDAQ 100 After Hours Indicator is up 5.62 to 4,343.85. The total After hours volume is currently 27,959,869 shares traded. The following are the most active stocks for the after hours session Microsoft Corporation ( MSFT ) is

Here’s Why Apple Should Be More Like Netflix

Loading the player… Amid slowing iPhone sales, Apple ( AAPL ) should take a page from Netflix’s ( NFLX ) playbook and go with the subscription model, according to a Bernstein report out Wednesday. With the cost of owning and using an iPhone averaging at about $3 a day, Bernstein says Apple could offer its products to customers as a bundled monthly service instead of single purchases of more than $700 every few years. The analyst believes customers could get more services from an Apple subscription bundle at a cheaper cost than their Internet and cable bills. Apple shares closed up 1.2% in above-average volume after testing support at the 10-day line in Tuesday’s session. The stock still has a lot of recovering to do after crumbling to its lowest level in nearly two years just last week, in the wake of the company’s disappointing quarterly earnings report. Apple is 28% below its all-time high reached in April 2015. Meanwhile, Netflix is looking to retake its 10-day line, an area the stock has struggled to stay above in the aftermath of its disappointing Q2 subscriber addition guidance about a month ago. Shares are trading 32% below their all-time high reached last December, but finished 2.1% higher Wednesday. Another big tech company benefiting from the subscription model is Amazon ( AMZN ). The e-commerce giant’s Amazon Prime service costs $99 dollars a year and is growing in popularity. Amazon also recently rolled out a monthly Prime membership for $10.99 a month and a video-only subscription for $8.99 a month. Amazon is looking for support at its 10-day line. The stock tried to climb back above the 700 price level in intraday trade but reversed lower by the afternoon, then ended up 0.3% at 697.45. Shares are 3% below their all-time high reached last week and extended 16% past a cup-with-handle buy point it initially cleared just a few weeks before the company’s latest quarterly report.

Stock Market Values – How To Value A Company With No Earnings

Is it just a case of irrational exuberance? Not necessarily. Traditional discounted cash flow analysis is a useful tool when it comes to evaluating financial assets, but it has its limitations. One aspect of investing that DCF analysis ignores is management’s flexibility. They can delay bringing a product to market, or expand its production to meet an unexpected surge in demand, or shift how their facilities are used – perhaps to produce a different kind of product. This kind of flexibility has real value. To capture this value, we use option-pricing methods to supplement traditional valuation. An option is an asset that can go up, but is limited to the downside. If management possesses a patent on a new drug, that patent has value even though it’s not producing cash right now. The upside may be huge while the downside is limited to the cost of bringing the medicine to the marketplace. Click to enlarge Call option pricing. Source: Wikipedia This is also why many tech companies seem to persistently carry such high valuations. The market is putting a high value of its potential growth, and the flexibility management has to pursue different approaches to its business. Putting a value on this kind of asset – management flexibility – is difficult, but it can be done. It depends on the cost of exercising the flexibility, the potential upside a change could realize, the amount of time management has to make the decision, and how volatile conditions are. The more volatile things are, the more these options have value. These values can all be quantified in a pricing model. Click to enlarge Black-Scholes Option Pricing Formula. Source: Wikipedia In practice, this involves a lot of assumptions about stock prices and strike prices and market volatility run through an analytical model with decision points and normal distributions. Additionally, the real world will insert complexities that our models can’t accommodate. Nevertheless, options methodology is essential for understanding why some money-losing companies still have high market values and why some profitable companies seem so cheap. Today, it seems the market is putting a lot of value on the options that Internet-media companies like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN ) and Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX ) possess. It’s not necessarily irrational just because you don’t understand it. Sometimes, what is unseen is more important than what is seen. It’s all in the options. Disclosure: I am/we are long THE MARKET. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.