Slope Of Hope with Tim Knight

Sino-Euro Support Analysis: Draft 0.1

Apple at $1000/share? Oh, at LEAST!

Most of you have probably already seen the bullgasm happening over at Barron's. Here's their cover for the week:

Mass Media Mantra: "Stocks are Cheap!"

In this lifetime, 99.5% of the people talking about equities have a vested interest in assets being bid higher. Being bullish is just what everyone does. It's the realm of normal. The bastion of the masses.

Usually it works. But just keep in mind that all the articles you are seeing about how cheap stocks are is hardly an - - umm - - objective viewpoint.

Just try to find the mass media warning you about how overpriced stocks were in early 2000 or mid-2007. That's a dry hole. And, to that point, I offer the value-priced CRM:

Apple Investors Have Jumped the Shark

OK, if there ever was a sign to short the living daylights out of AAPL, this is it:

An entire conference has been put together (which you can attend for $395) whose sole purpose is to talk about trading AAPL. Featuring Dancing-with-the-Stars celebrity Steve Wozniak, who will spin old yarns about his experience in the 1970s when he actually worked there.

Stick a fork in it, folks. We have reached complete cultural saturation. I'll say what no one else will dare say: not only will AAPL not reach the trillion-dollar market cap which seems to be a universal given, but it will lose half its value within the next three years.

This "summit" is just about the dumbest thing I've ever seen since the late-90s bubble. And I say this as a former Apple employee, 1984-Macintosh buyer, first-day iPhone buyer, first-day iPad buyer, and all-around Steve Jobs worshipper.

Remarkably Consistent

With all the horror stories about Groupon floating around, one really does wonder what shareholders must be thinking. Below are daily bars for the past seven trading days.

That Groupon Feeling

Proper Retorts

As a bear in a world stuffed to the gills with bulls, I have been the target of plenty of derision in the seven years I've been doing this blog. I thought it was high time to reveal the various levels of sophistication that go into debating a person with a different viewpoint. I will note that calling someone an "ass hat" - - which is a term-of-art over at IBC when it comes to describing me - is the most base of these choices.

Professional Pundits Past Predictions Puked

I would also point out this painfully on-target embellishment by The Dude.

Caption Contest!

Amateurville

Well, for all the members of the public who wanted "in" on the hot Zynga IPO, they managed to gobble it up at today's opening. The lucky folks who managed to get in at the open are down 20% so far on this "investment". But I think it's got a lot farther to fall in the coming months.

Why the retail crowd always wants to jump in to stuff like LNKD, P, Z, GRPN is beyond me. I think they've got 1999 on the brain.