Here’s the deal. I both hate and love Apple (AAPL). I would love to short the damned stock, because I hate idiots who buy stuff at overprices because “It’s Apple, you know”. Not to mention the fact that its a regular hedge-fund hotel these days. At the same time, I would love to own the damned stock, because clearly they are a very clever capitalist company. DoctorX @ TheDailyCapitalist lays out the case for why to own Apple. So, what is my take-away from all this? I won’t short Apple anytime soon, BUT if there is a massive worldwide consumer crunch, I will. Because then, everyone will buy cheaper copies of shit-that-Apple-makes.
For now, I’ll settle with shorting indices here and there, and riding the gold&silver bull. But at some point, I wish I could do something more interesting with my investments. Like an AAPL/Google spread-trade (would have worked pretty neatly with the recent performance of GOOG). What would really be hysterical was if Microsoft turned into an outperformer. Oh, how I would laugh….
Maybe I should just go into currencies. CHF/GBP long? Or maybe spread-trading the PIIGS? Since we are no longer seeing interest rates, rather implied recovery prices (thanks to MarketTicker for that info), we can always try to asses “which is the crappiest country in Euro-zone” to make things a bit funnier. Though everyone knows its Greece, maybe you could play it from another angle…..long French banks over Spanish? Maybe not. German banks over British? Possibly. Italian banks over Greek? Hell, I’m just blurting things out there at this point. Corn over Platinum? Japanese bond rates over JPM earnings? This is getting ridiculous. Yet the whole speculative system is ridiculous, so why not me as well. Let’s see …… chance of Blankfein indictment over Pelosi pushing out Obama for 2012? Jamie Dimon as Treasury Secretary over Dominique Strauss-Kahn as french premier? Sarkozy involved in no sex scandal for five years over David Cameron getting the British economy working? Dumbledore turning up on Leicester Square over Mervyn King actually getting anything right, ever?
I could go on, but its way past my bed-time, which is the reason for this schizophrenia.
Orange Juice futures over Apple iPad pricing…..?
Definitely the orange juice.