Despite declining earnings expectations, AAPL's share price just broke above its record closing high (from Feb 2015).
As WSJ notes, the tech giant’s shares–among the most widely held and actively traded in the world–hit $133.42 moments ago, trading above their record close of $133 from February 2015. And they’re inches away from their all-time intraday high of $134.54, set in April 2015.
Shares of the $700 billion company are up about 41% in the past 12 months, and more than 9% since Apple pulled back the curtain on its latest earnings report on Jan. 31 to reveal an end to a three-quarter streak of declining revenue.
As the stock prices has soared, volume has slid...
Monday’s trading is the capstone of a recovery in the shares after a prolonged downturn from July 2015 to May 2016, when the stock fell 30% as investor concern mounted over the pace of iPhone sales, soft demand from China, and speculation about whether the company will ever again come up with a product with even a fraction of the impact of the iPhone. In that span, the Apple Watch failed to catch on as quickly as some had hoped, and sales of the company’s iPad tablet swooned.
Near the end of that stretch, Apple momentarily lost its crown as the world’s largest company by market capitalization to Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Apple regained the mantle, and the gap between the two began to widen again when Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway revealed that it had taken a stake worth nearly $1 billion in Apple.
But earnings expectations have done anything but rise...
But don't let that worry you...