by Rick Ackerman, Rick’s Picks
It’s one thing for DaBoyz to goose the broad averages following last week’s earnings announcements from world-beaters Google and Amazon. But what happens when the companies doing the announcing are, respectively, a hoax and a has-been. I’m referring to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), and although some might quibble over the way I’ve characterized them, the earnings news these companies released after Tuesday’s close appears to have laid an egg.
Initially both stocks spasmed wildly, since that’s what stocks do when thieves, rubes and psychopaths are loosed upon each other in thin, after-hours trading. But Twitter has since plunged $8 after making a fleeting high at 33.40; and Apple, after gyrating violently from $111 to $118 in the space of a single bar, has gone comatose in the $114-$115 range, where it had ended the regular session. If the Street’s Masters of the Universe were looking for these two companies to lift the broad averages Wednesday morning, they’re going to be disappointed.
So why “hoax” and “has-been”? Twitter’s problem is that the company has yet to figure out a way to make money. Undoubtedly, that is why the stock has been falling – to a recent low of $21 after peaking post-IPO near $75 in December 2013. The analysts evidently still think TWTR can succeed, but these are the same bozos who have been in love with Yahoo and its wunderkind CEO Marissa Mayer for the last year, as the stock has fallen by half, from $53 to $27. As for Apple being a has-been, while it’s true that the $51 billion quarter just announced is not exactly chopped liver, their wristwatch partnership with Hermes and a recently announced foray into the automobile business suggest that the company may have run out of ideas. We shall see. For now, though, Apple bulls had better watch out below when the usual suspects on Wall Street can’t goose the stock for a quick 10% gain when earnings cross the tape.
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