Factors Affecting Apple's Share Price

The weekly performance of IBM stock presented a contestant growth. One highlight of the falling of stock price in the 6th week in the investment period was when IBM presented the 3rd quarter financial report. The investors weren’t satisfied with the profit report which they expected to be better especially when other IT companies were doing well in the 3rd quarter. One mistake I made was that I didn’t follow closely to the financial report of the company; therefore, I missed the peak of the stock price. From this experience, I learned that financial reports and current news are important indicators of the stock price. By following closely to the current event and analyzing the financial report, investors can maximize the profit and also become more familiar to the market.

This paper introduces six economic indicators that affect Apple Inc. and how they form part of the firm strategic plans and goals for the future of the firm. A definition this paper provides a definition of each economic indicator along with an explanation of how they affect the company’s domestic operations. In addition, the paper offers suggestions as of what the strategic response for each indicator should be.

The research shows that the earnings announcements of firms within an industry can impact the share prices of other firms in the same industry. This effect has been labelled as the ‘information transfer effect’. The ‘information transfer effect’ highlights the belief that share prices react to public information emanating from various sources—including

Apple Inc. commonly known as Apple has effectively managed to be a successful company in a very competitive consumer electronics industry by been innovative and differentiating the company’s products with similar products in the markets by offering high quality products and good customer service while the actual manufacturing of the products is outsourced to trusted third party suppliers. On a wider perspective, the company has set high standards that even the company itself has to be on its level best to maintain the standards that it has set. Over the last few years, the consumer electronics market has

The figure above shows Apple Inc, the Market cap lead, and Dell, the Market cap last, corporations and their market share compared to the industry and the technology sector. As you can see above Apple Inc. is almost as close to the market cap for the Personal Computers industry. Although, it does have a smaller P/E ratio compared to the industry it still is the highest among the top leaders within the industry. Compared to the industry Apple’s does not have a debt to equity ratio, which is excellent. Apple’s net profit is also the highest within the top competitors and the industry. The price to free cash flow exceeds the industry as well as the technology sector.

The stock market prices and value vary day to day as a result of market forces. This means that stocks and shares prices change as result of supply and demand of goods and services. The stock market influences the financial decision making of companies. Therefore, it is important to follow said shares as well as others that might affect stocks of interest. Price vary accordingly with demand and supply, that is, if there is a higher demand then prices increases, whereas, if supply is higher than demand, stock prices decreases.

Throughout the past year, Apple stock has had an astounding growth of 45% over the past twelve months, as well as a 10% growth of dividends by 10%. This increase in dividend is expected to increase by 7.43% over the next 12 months. Along with stock price and dividends, earnings per share is also expected to rise. Earnings per share is expected to rise from the current amount of $1.88 to as high as $10.74 per share. Apple’s marketing strategy is designed to keep stock prices high and shareholders happy. This growth in Apple stock is expected to continue to rise with a median change of 8.7% in the next twelve months. The current state of Apple stock is very impressive and market predictions show that it should become even more impressive in the next twelve months. (Financial Times

These changes in prices imply the power of growth rate’s assumption over stock price because “It was growth that drew attention to the brand. It was growth that propelled the stock offering. It was growth that drove the stock price to ever greater heights.” When the growth rate is expected to increase significantly, value of the firm is increased tremendously and so is its stock price. Both the enterprise value of the firm and its stock price change in the same direction with the change in growth rate estimates.

The stock that I have analyzed is Apple (AAPPL), which it falls under the technology sector and trades under the NASDAQ. This sector holds the biggest companies around the world. A lot of these companies are well known such as: Amazon, Google, LinkedIn, and etc. The technology sector is an undeniably investment opportunity for every investor around the world. Lets face it technology keeps improving and we have only seen the beginning of it. These companies, such as Apple, are associated with constant innovation and invention. Our modern economy relies upon the technology sector to improve quality, productivity, and profitability.

Our group decided to analyse the company Apple Inc., listed on Nasdaq Market as AAPL. The analysis was mainly based on the annual financial report of the company for the fiscal year ended on September 29th 2007. Apple Inc. is today one of the most

For example, Manna (1966) states that insider trading should be allowed because insider trading is the most effective way to compensate to insider to generate new economic information in firm. Hirshleifer() states that for insider, good information is as good as bad information to make profit but this profit may not be related to economic contribution of insiders in corporate. Proponents of insider trading suggest (Carlton and Fischel (1983) that insiders are the most informative member in the market, and by trading, they bring new information to the markets and causing prices to change toward their true value and, therefore, promoting the optimal allocation of resources. On the other hand, Scholars (Benabou and Laroqu, 1992) say that insider trading may provide incentive to corporate insiders either to delay the announcement of price-sensitive information to public or to prevent to release price sensitive information, which in turn makes stock prices less informative. However, Georgakopoulos (1993) argues that restriction on insider trading may have little adverse impact on market efficiency but it reduces the cost of transaction that burdens on uninformed traders

We chose to research Apple Incorporated, one of the most innovative companies of our generation. It is safe to say that nearly every one in the US and many foreign countries have used or at least heard of Apple products. We will be looking at the macroeconomic variables that impact Apple’s business as well as how the current developments in the industry have impacted Apple’s financials and we will also look at how Apple competes with other firms in the same industry.

Apple, Inc. currently has a Price-to-Earnings ratio of 43.70, compared to the industry standard of 36.50, and the S&P 500 average of 20.73. This indicates that Apple has a lower amount of risk than other firms in the computer manufacturing industry and other firms in

Analyzing Apple’s stock price movement for the past three years, there has been a steady upward trend in the past one and a half years, from August 2007 to December 2008. The MACD began to move erratically from April 2008 onwards which suggests that the trading environment is growing more unpredictable with investors’ confidence changing momentum more drastically. This could be due to the looming global economic crisis. From the graphs below, one positive note is that Apple’s stock price consistently outperforms the market indices—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and NASDAQ. In the long run, Apple’s stock is expected to rise tentatively in this volatile trading environment. Should this trend hold strong, we would recommend a buy option as the prices are on an upward sloping trend.

As indicated by the case study S&P 500 index was use as a measure of the total return for the stock market. Our standard deviation of the total return was used as a one measure of the risk of an individual stock. Also betas for individual stocks are determined by simple linear regression. The variables were: total return for the stock as the dependent variable and independent variable is the total return for the stock. Since the descriptive statistics were a lot, only the necessary data was selected (below table.)