This is a discussion thread for the "Apple Quarterly Results: Busting Records, Disappointing Wall Street" story posted on the front page.
It's normal for these stocks to ramp up on rumor and decline on announcements. I think it's impossible for a company with Apple's track record at this point to continue to live up to investors expectations quarter after quarter.
IMHO, the stock performance is largely driven by the earning "expectation" of the investors, which makes investors willing to pay more for the stock. If you accuse the investors of making unrealistic expectation on earnings, that also implies that the current stock price is already unrealistic/unjustifiable. It is unfair to "blame" investors for making high expectation while you enjoy the ride on stock price, because the reason you have the rise is due to the high expectation at the first place.
I guess "disappointing Wall Street" equals to that USD7.29 drop in AAPL stock yesterday... The share price is now at USD609.538, and it feels like those heady days of USD700+ a share were such a long time ago! Remember what happened to Google as well? Because of the leak from Google's accountants mentioning that their earnings missed estimates, this caused the share price to plunge 10%, which is a huge drop... The price actually fell from USD755.49 (Oct 17) to USD695.00 the next day (it was USD677.76 yesterday)!
