Apple Earnings: Still the Greatest Sandbaggers on Earth?

Minyan Kraig emails his bewilderment over: “a rising S&P in response to news that ‘(companies) are only mostly dead; not all dead”.

Later he continues: “So, I’m waiting... And waiting... To be proven right. I keep calm by telling myself that very few featured over the last year made out huge on the CDS market, especially if they had to sit on those holdings for a year or more while they waited to be proven right. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too much longer for those firms to blow-up; quite frankly I don’t think I can.”

To paraphrase Sir John Maynard Kaynes, had he been raised smoking blunts in the Bronx rather than long-stemmed pipes at Cambridge: “The market can stay whacked longer than you can keep your hope or your Benjamins."

As another great philosopher says often, “trade the market you have, not the one you think should be." If Caterpillar (CAT) can be up 10% after issuing an earnings report that proved nothing except the undeniable truth that Caterpillar doesn’t have the foggiest idea where their earnings will be from one quarter to the next, it’s too early to short, probably too late to buy and a good time to draw pictures of yourself if you were ‘roided up and wearing a 4-year-old’s pajamas.

For what it’s worth, The Marking One was a tight-rope walking on the S&P at 950. Men on the wire always end up like Papa Wallenda in San Juan, but making it to 73 and sticking to ropes as stable as SPX 950 while getting rich at the time. Then again, landing on a cab in San Juan doesn’t sound like a slice of heaven.

Here are some of the ups and downs running through my mind as the day gets late:
 

• The government is “investigating” mandatory long-term contracts for cell phones, while Verizon (VZ) is proactively loosening their own rules on that front. Needless to say, I agree with the move.
  
  
• I got a note from a fella who was accusing me of selling Apple (AAPL) at $100 (verifiably false) and likely fibbing about having bought huge at $80 ($1.80) from the closing lows and still being long with “Apple at $154.” I’m more likely to get long stocks with people who lie to me about me than I am a guy bragging on his gains of the day prior to an earnings report from the greatest sandbaggers on earth.
  
  CAT can rip with utterly nonsensical reports. Apple has to beat numbers by a mile and raise guidance. If they miss, shareholders will envy Karl in San Juan.
  
  
• My Mac repair guy actually uses a BlackBerry (RIMM) phone, with an iPhone as a jukebox/ toy. As do I. Why? We both like making phone calls, and AT&T (T) had, has, and will continue to have the worst cellular network on earth. There’s a reason the stock has dropped 40% since becoming the sole distributor of one of the best-selling products in history.
  
  
• Also reporting tonight: Starbucks (SBUX). The company became a monster by selling coffee. In an effort to return to their core business, the dumped the food and went back to nearly 95% coffee. One of the great trader barroom debates is whether the airlines hedge oil at the top of jet-fuel closer to the all-time top than Starbucks ditched food at the all-time lows of coffee. Either way, SBUX is back to food and coffee. Good news for beatniks and out-of-work writers. Bad news for SBUX shareholders.