Apple stock is up 31 percent this year
The stock is not what it was in 2007, when it rose nearly 136% in the space of 12 months, but Apple (AAPL) is off to a good start in 2009.
From Jan. 2, when it opened at $85.88, to April 2, when it closed at $112.71, Apple has gained 31.24% — easily outpacing the Dow, which is still down more than 9% for the year.
So how is Apple doing relative to the stocks it's most often compared with, the so-called "Four Horsemen of Tech"? As the chart below shows, it has so far out-performed Google (GOOG) and Research in Motion (RIMM), but paled beside Amazon (AMZN), which is up 48%.
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Apple is nothing if not volatile, but not matter what happens there's no way that 2009 could to end up looking like 2008, when its shares fell more than 56% and its market cap dropped nearly $100 billion. Apple's enterprise value today is $71 billion and $28.8 billion of that is in cash and negotiable securities.
Apple opened at $113.75 and was up more than 2% in early trading Friday.
The big mover Friday, however, was RIM, which opened at $58.13, up nearly 20% following Thursday's surprisingly strong fourth-quarter earnings report. That pushes it ahead of Apple in the Four Horsemen chart, but still trailing Amazon.
wow this is great. I think i will wait till it gets to around 200 then short it. wow that worked so well last time… itard fools
RIM just took a big dump all over Apple. Better just let it go. The company that is being systematically destroyed by the iPhone platform and has only a few months of survival left is suddenly the investor's favorite smartphone company. A month ago, it was said that RIM would never get over $50 and now it's being said it won't get over $60. RIM is a company that makes impending doom look good.
It was said that the reason RIM looked so good this quarter was because it was practically giving it's phones away. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but I guess RIM investors don't concern themselves with things like that.
Of course you can't win with this readership. Apple is a hot-button topic!
As the WHOPR says in Wargames, the only way to win is to not play, but where would the fun in that be?
Ok, I don't really like RIMM but you *have* to revise given their jump in the AH yesterday (and an even greater one today). Otherwise, this just looks badly timed and out-of-date. Also, I would actually scrub the article and re-post after AAPL earnings (or at least post an update).
ex ped: Too late to scrub, but addendum added to acknowledge RIM's gains Friday.
@Brian
You may not have noticed Brian but we are still in the recession and probably will be for another year. And since iPhone sales account for less than 7 percent of Apple's gross revenue, it won't make much difference how well the phones sell. Apple is looking at a 16 percent drop in revenues, that doesn't seem to be a good sign for the stock going back to $200 any time soon.
What I think is interesting is how -diverse- the 4 horsemen are.
Google is (mostly) software service provider.
Amazon is (mostly) an internet retailer.
RIM is a hardware systems vendor.
Apple is a hardware & software systems vendor.
What remains to be seen is whether RIM can break away from its single product. Apple has very successfully done that -twice- (a rather amazing feat).
We'll have to see what Microsoft, HP and Dell do, and I think IBM is the 'dark horse' here, particularly with the (imminent?) purchase of Sun. IBM is very strong in B2B kinds of things, where these 4 horseman are very much consumer focused. HP & Dell are both consumer and B2B.
But I think the (a) strength; (b) diversity; (c) strong cash position of AAPL means that it's still likely to be 'sector outperform', once we figure out what that sector really is 
@Randy
There was this little thing called a recession we went through last fall. Maybe you heard of that?
No way it's not going to back beyond $200. iPhone profits are ramping up exponentially.
Of course, the major unknown is Steve Jobs. If Jobs isn't back by June I think Apple is dead money for a long time.
Let's see, April 2, 2008 the stock was at $148 a share. I would say the stock is down year over year and off from its high of over $200, why are you writing this?
ex ped: Hmm. I get slammed for including a sentence about how the stock dropped in 2008 and slammed for not leading with it. Can't win with this readership.
Thanks Phil, for that brilliant commentary! Sometimes your articles are just so engaging, well-researched, and thoughtful that I just can't take it. The sentence: "Of course . . . it's not too late for 2009 to end up looking more like 2008"- way to take a such a non-wishy-washy stance!
So you are suggesting Apple could drop 56% from $85.88 or close at $37.79 on December 31st?
That would mean Apple would be trading below its cash value at that time.
Stock performance means NOTHING!
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com