Will The Apple Trade For Macworld Work in 2008? (AAPL)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Apr 3, 12:53PM EDT · Published Jan 9, 7:39AM EST

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) hasn’t gotten off to a good 2008 as a stock. Shares closed at $198.08 to close out 2007 and shares very briefly traded north of $200.00 on the opening day of 2008. But shares closed at $171.25 yesterday.

Historically traders and investors have bought shares and won going into the annual Macworld event with Steve Jobs. We still have a few trading sessions before Jobs gets to unveil whatever it is that is Apple’s new next big thing. Maybe it will be a leaner and lighter laptop priced more within reach for most in the U.S., but that is just speculation that varies from house to house.

We ran various calculations with time frames varying ahead of the Macworld event over the last five years. It isn’t exact science because closing and opening prices are rarely delegated to all. But in the past buying Apple on the day ahead and even the day after has yielded positive returns. We’ll follow up later with more specific numbers because we asked for calculations and received different numbers.

With a near 15% pullback, you have to wonder if this challenging market will accommodate this past trend in 2008. The good news is that over the last few years investors who have tried bottom fishing when Apple shares sell off 10% or 15% have tended to win in the long haul. Apple’s market cap now sits at roughly $150 Billion, it trades at 33.6 times fiscal September 2008 earnings, and trades at roughly 5-times projected revenues.

2008 Tech Kickoff: Macworld Versus Consumer Electronics Show, CES

Jon C. Ogg
January 9, 2008

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.