[citation][nom]mman74[/nom]How does one derive a value of a company? Well there's it's physical assets, there's also it's rate of income, then there's that unquantifiable portion which can be best described as in the market's expectations for tomorrow.So since Tim took over, what's changed? Well it's assets and income is more or less the same, and if the iPhone 5 numbers are to be believed they are in fact doing better than ever. The only thing that's changed is the leadership, and under the new guy they've stopped believin', they've lost that feeling![/citation]
I think you are putting more faith in investors actually knowing something about the company and "investing" their money in some kind of wise way. The stock market is, bottom line, mostly about gambling, rolling the dice just like in a craps game.
A company selling shares of itself to raise capital is a good thing, but this business of selling those shares back and forth as a normal way of doing business is just insane. And, even crazier than that, games like poker are illegal in much of America, and internet poker is still illegal. We can put the country in a recession with bad stock market gambling, but we can't play poker for fun? Absolutely looney-toons.
It's very clear to me that Apple's stock has been vastly over-valued (but then, the value of something is determined by how much a customer will pay for it, so if someone is willing to pay $700/share, it's worth that at the time.) and frankly I wonder how it got that way, and why isn't the FTC looking into possible market price manipulation (maybe they are).