I took a pummeling on my Apple stock today as everyone rushes to sell. After hours trading is showing that I'll lose more tomorrow. My plan was to cash out after the earnings report, expecting there to be a spike in the stock after Apple announced that they blew away the estimates. Well, they did blow away the estimates, yet the stock is plummeting. Why? Well, likely because the forecasts for the next quarter weren't so great. I'm sure there is some profit taking, too, which is what I should have done last week. I'm not sophisticated enough yet to know if hedge funds might be up to some tricks to keep the price were it needs to be for their options. Either way, though, I definately leared something:

Lesson learned: how much money a company earned last quarter isn't nearly as important as how much they expect to make next quarter.

Of course, I already knew that but I didn't connect all the mental dots. If amateur little me knows that nothing is really going to move Apple over the next few months, then I should have figured that others might feel the same way. At this point, though, I'm going to ride it out. I don't want to sell during this frenzied panic as I am betting that tomorrow, or pehaps even later today, a whole bunch of investors are going to look at Apple and go "gee, look how cheap Apple is. What a great time to buy!". Actually, if I had sold a few days ago, I'd probably be buying it right back up again while it is under $90. Still, my theory on why I wanted to sell Apple after the earnings announcement should have told me to sell before the earning announcement: not much will be going on for Apple until this summer when they start shipping iPhones. I think Apple is still a great long term play, but I expect it will be a bumpy ride for the next six months.

--Chris