Sorry, but that's BS. I held a very significant AAPL portfolio (in a few million dollars) for over 10 years, which I just sold this past Thursday. I didn't feel like Apple had my best interests at heart. AAPL didn't do quite as well as other FAANG stocks did. In hindsight, I should have invested in AMZN, as the return would have been significantly better. Sitting on a pile of cash does nothing for the shareholders, as does the absolute lack of vision by Tim Cook.
The only reason that the stock has held up recently is the absolutely outrageous amount of money that Tim has thrown at stock buybacks. But even with that, the P/E ratio has been sliding down slowly but surely, which means that Wall Street has no trust in Apple's ability to grow any time soon. If Tim Apple had my best interests at heart as a shareholder, he would have aggressively increased the dividend payments rather than throwing hundreds of billions of dollars on stock buybacks. However, I do realize that the stock buybacks is the only reason that AAPL hasn't lost 25-40% of its value by now compared to its highs. These hundreds of billions of dollars, and not the Apple's innovation, is what kept AAPL afloat for the past few years.
The fact that Tim was warned by Trump almost three years ago now to move manufacturing out of China but was doing nothing to that end until very recently tells me that Tim didn't have my best interests at heart. In fact, I consider this a dereliction of his duties and a complete failure as CEO. The next year or two will be very rocky for the AAPL shareholders due to Apple being caught with their pants down when it comes to tariffs due to their almost 100% dependence on the Chinese manufacturing. Don't blame Trump; he told Tim to start planning exit from China 3 years ago.
I'm betting on no deal with China any time soon and the 30% tariff on the Apple Watch and iMacs (going in affect on September 1), no exciting products announced by Apple on September 10th, then no-deal Brexit on October 31st, slow holiday season for Apple due to the lack of 5G iPhones this year, and finally, a 15% tariff on the iPhone (going in affect on December 15th). These are multiple punches that are going to hit AAPL one after another against the backdrop of the entire market going down due to the escalating trade war with China and the UK bolting out of Europe with no deal.
In the past, I wished so many times that I had sold AAPL before just one event like this because it always hit AAPL hard and negatively affected the stock price for months (if not years). This time around, there are multiple events that are going to hit AAPL one after another within the next 4 months, and I do not have any trust in either Apple's product pipeline or in the wisdom of Tim Cook to weather the storm, worth risking my investments. Hence, I'm almost completely in cash as of two days ago. I believe the market correction is going to start in November 2019 (when Brexit occurs) and continue until at least the end of December 2019, similarly to the way it happened in 2018. This time around, though, the real "no-deal" Brexit and the full-blown trade war with China will not be just fears but rather reality.
My next task is to decide what to invest in after the overall market corrects itself, and I no longer think that I will invest nearly as much (if anything at all) in AAPL. I haven't been excited about what Apple has been doing for years now. I no longer watch the boring Apple's keynotes unlike in the past when I would tune in live and sit on the edge of my chair throughout the keynote. I stopped following the iPad completely, as the crippled software makes it a boring product for me, and overall, I just think that Apple has lost its cool factor - at least for me. I'm not excited about Apple raising the prices on their iPhones and Macs - that's not good for the shareholders at all because it results in sales numbers continually trending down year after year. I'm not at all impressed by the Apple's "services" sector, as in my opinion, their services are amateurish. They can't even pave their way in education due to the lack of a cloud offering that suits the education sector. Their "services" are completely useless in the enterprise. The only sector where their "services" are acceptable are for private home use, but even there the Apple's "services are extremely limited and leave a lot to be desired. Apple is leaving so much money on the table for no reason whatsoever, and their shortsightedness when it comes to their approach to the enterprise has bothered me for years.
My iPhone 7 is 3 years old, and my wife's iPhone X is two years old. We are not planning to buy a new iPhone for the next several years. In fact, I'm seriously considering switching to Android at this point because Android excites me more than iOS at this point. I never thought I would ever utter anything like this, but here I am not even wanting a new iPhone.
I'm happy I was able to get out of AAPL before the next downturn this time around. Tim Cook has killed the excitement of Apple for me, and I'm no longer willing to ride the AAPL train all the way down the cliff. So, to sum it all up, I don't believe that Tim Cook has ever had the shareholders' interests in mind. I think that all Tim is concerned with is his social agenda. He has bitten much more than he can swallow at this point, as he was never ready to be CEO of a company like what Apple used to be when Steve Jobs ran it in the first decade of the 21st century. Tim Cook has failed as CEO and he is failing as a logistics guru by not having taken Trump seriously three years ago.
