Are investors souring on Apple?
Apple shares fell 12 percent after record iPhone sales in December failed to meet forecasts.
In its latest profit report, Apple revealed that iPhone sales reached 47.8 million in December — a record number for the company, but disappointing to investors.
“Apple has made a ton of money and has been very very profitable, and Apple, very cleverly, has always understated what it expected its profits to be,” Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large at Fortune Magazine said. “One of my favorite statistics is that from it’s high last September through the bottom of its bad day on thursday, the decline in its market value, which was more than $230 billion, was more than the entire market value of Microsoft.”
Because Apple is such a widely known and widely held stock, Sloan said that if investors have truly begun to lose their taste for Apple, many mutal funds and retirement accounts could also start to go bad.
“It was a big favorite in mutual funds, because it was going up, so everyone came in and bought it. And now they’re probably all selling it, because that’s what it’s like in Wall Street,” he said.