There may be a silver lining in Apple’s announcement it won’t attend future Macworld Expo trade shows. Despite the downgrades and talk of CEO succession planning, one analyst says Apple can only benefit from Tuesday’s decision.
“I see this as a major boon for investors, rather than a bust,” independent Apple analyst Andy Zaky said in an e-mail to Cult of Mac.
Only traders wishing to manipulate Apple stock through rumors and speculation could be hurt, according to Zaky.
Since 2007, Macworld events have seen “massive selling in Apple’s stock,” he said. In fact, every Apple media event has resulted in a drop in stock prices.
Macworld 2008 was followed by a nearly 11 percent drop in Apple stock price. Apple shares fell 10 percent leading up to and following the iPhone 3G announcement. The big notebook announcement in October meant an 11 percent stock drop, said Zaky.
When the original iPhone was released, Apple’s stock rose and then all gains were lost the following week, according to the analyst.
“Apple would be better off eliminating every media event,” the analyst told Cult of Mac. Instead, the Cupertino, Calif. company could issue simple product announcements.
Along with putting an end to so-called ‘sell the rumor, sell the news’ stock action, the departure by Jobs from Macworld likely means the “final hurrah” for public speculation about the CEO’s health status, Zaky believes.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
