Insiders are selling Apple. Should you?

November 8, 2014

 

Talking Numbers
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Apple’s all-time highs are getting at least a few people—the company’s top insiders—to sell shares.

According to several published reports, several of Apple’s top brass have been selling tens of millions of dollars’ worth of Apple stock over the past couple months.

So with Apple’s top people selling bits of their stake, is it time for investors to reconsider their own positions?

“I look at it as a one-off scenario,” said David Seaburg, head of equity sales trading at Cowen and Company, who remains bullish on Apple.

“It’s in a very strong position,” he said. “This is a company that people have been very comfortable in owning into year-end.”

It’s tough to find another tech company matching Apple’s revenue growth, Seaburg said. And he also thinks the market is underestimating the importance of its new Apple Pay product because of its potential to help spur iPhone sales.

“It’s not based on transactions [where] they’re going to make a lot of money,” he said. “It’s on device sales. … The transaction issue is a little added benefit. It’s really the fact that they have people buy the device and upgrade to this product. That’s going to continue to drive it going forward.”

The technicals are equally bullish, according to the chart work of one leading technical analyst.

“The chart on Apple still looks very constructive,” said Craig Johnson, senior technical analyst at Piper Jaffray and president of the Market Technicians Association.

Johnson sees Apple as having recently broken above a base of consolidation that began in 2012. And the height of that consolidation projects a target quite a bit higher than here. At midafternoon Thursday, it was trading above $108 a share.

“It still looks like there is 25 percent upside from here, up to about the $130 – $135ish levels,” Johnson said. “I would still be a buyer of Apple based on the chart and from our perspective, the chart says it all. It is bullish.”

 

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