December 27, 2017
Welcome to the slowest week of the year. Four days of trading with half of Wall Street in the mountains of NY State, Vermont, Colorado or Utah. Or the flats of Florida. (We’ll take the mountains of Aspen any day.)
Some thoughts on Apple and Square as we head into 2018.
Apple (AAPL: $170) got hit this week due to a guess that a Wall Street firm made as to iPhone X orders. In fact, with news just out, Apple devices accounted for 44% of smartphone and tablet activations over the holidays, with nearly a third of those coming from new devices including the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X. We think this is just stellar. And what Wall Street seems to be forgetting is that the iPhone X was being sold for just a short period of time during this quarter. Wait until the results come out from the quarter we are in! With the stock down 5 points over this “news,” we would be buyers here for sure.
Square (SQ: $36) is down from its high a month ago when it hit $49, but if you look at this chart for the past 12 months, you can sit back and smile. The stock is strong today as we write this. We would be buyers here at this level and we think we will be smiling even more next Christmas.
We didn’t do a newsletter on Christmas Eve, but plan on doing one this weekend on New Year’s Eve. So go out and celebrate and think of us, as we’ll be hammering out the letter in our cozy little VRBO condo in Georgetown, DC, as we visit the kids and grandkids.
Good Investing this week and on into 2018!
Todd Shaver