Since the blackout period for buybacks ended after earnings last week, Apple shares have found a dip-buyer every day willing to lift the stock off its lows and close it at its highs... after a disappointing earnings call and outlook, the stock is up almost 7%, breaking above $150 and topping $800 Billion market cap for the first time ever...
Ahead of this week's AAPL earnings, investors were looking forward to more clues what the company with the quarter-trillion cash war chest would do with the funds that are now greater than the GDP of Greece, and aside from the token increase in shareholder distributions, they got little else, which has once again prompted speculation who Apple will acquire once the company decides to shift away from corporate bond holdings (recall that as of this quarter Apple now has more corporate debt on its books than the biggest bond mutual fund) to acquisitions.
With all eyes on crude, following last night's mini flash crash which sent WTI lower by 3% from just above $45 to under $43 in under 10 minutes, equity markets, generally quiet overnight, have taken on a secondary importance ahead of today's key risk event, the April payrolls report (full preview here). In global equities, Asian and European stocks are lower, while S&P futures are little changed.
Nearly five years ago, when looking at the cash and cash equivalents of Apple, which at the time was a far more "modest" $121 billion in gross cash (and virtually no debt at the time), we noted that Tim Cook's company was "the world's biggest hedge fund you have never heard of." Five years later, with more details available about its balance sheet holdings, we can conclude that in addition to the world's largest publicly traded company, Apple has now also become the world's biggest bond fund.
Yesterday in an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook said the tech giant would be devoting $1 billion to promote "advanced manufacturing" jobs in the United States.
"We're announcing it today. So you're the first person I'm telling," Cook told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer on Wednesday. "Well, not the first person because we've talked to a company that we're going to invest in already," he said, adding that Apple will announce the first investment later in May. -CNBC