In 2009, Jobs was on leave from January to June with Tim Cook in charge. There was a dip in the stock when it happened, but it did just fine during the period of his absence (if you define "just fine" as going from ~ $82.00 to ~ $142.00)

I think after it all sorts itself out, it'll be fine.

I'm just not sure. Analysts have generally been clueless when talking about apple, and I don't see that changing. And now they're saying that things would be alright for 6mo to a year, no matter what. That's a code for: I'm selling first thing.

They'll sell today and tomorrow they'll see it's lower, think it's a bargain and all buy it back... These are not bright people (or rather they often are demonstrably very bright people who just hide it well with their words and actions).

IMHO not the best example : If they can sell today and buy it back lower tomorrow, then that's pretty smart. They own the same thing, but have $$ left over.

If that was their intention then yes it's smart but it seems it's rarely thought out that far in advance. And when by "that far in advance" I mean "tomorrow" it's a bit scary.

FWIW -- Even Fortune thinks the analysts don't have it together with Apple: http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/01/19/apples-blow-out-quart...

Not at all. The timing on this was perfect.

Today is a holiday, so there is no trading... but it is a weekday so the press will have this thing over and done by the end of today. Tomorrow it is old news.

Tomorrow is also their earnings announcement. That will have a bigger impact on the stock than Steve taking time off.

Tomorrow they will talk about Mac App store results, 10 billion apps sold, Verizon estimates and drop hints about revenue from their new products in 2011 (iPad 2 etc).

This was well planned.

Sounds like a great time to buy then if the market is over-reacting to news.

When does the market not overreact to news? (Answer: when it's actually good news but hard to comprehend.)

When it under reacts?

Try this strategy on a historical price and news database:

  1. Wait for the initial over reaction
  2. Trade
  3. Wait for a period
  4. Reverse the trade

Only if Jobs recovers...

I hope he does. Like laujen pointed out, our world would be far less interesting without him.

It already has lost 6% (around 8% at the low point) in European trading.

For the sake of comparison, BP lost .65% the day after the Deepwater Horizon spill.

BP has more roughly 3 times as many shares outstanding, so it's probably somewhat harder to move the price much.

Also, it wasn't clear at that point how bad it was. It was "just" an exploded platform.

the numbers of shares is not important. Apples Market Cap is about twice the size of BP but even this is not important if you look at a relative change (%), not an absolute ($).

The second point is the important one... news that there was a really big problem was slow to come out. Eventually BP lost 50% of its value, but it took many weeks.

As heartless as this may sound, I think Apple stock will represent whatever the media says about his health. I hope he recovers to good health, whatever might be the problem.

Yep, no doubt. If only for this reason, Apple needs to figure out Apple sans Jobs.

My guess is they have, just not publicly. (Easy to argue the merits of that.) Pancreatic cancer doesn't leave too many survivors so I am sure the management team thought a lot about life without steve, at least at that time.

I agree, but I think it's less of an internal logistics issue and much more of a public image issue: Steve Jobs is so much the face of Apple as it sits currently, every time there's news about his health the stock fluctuates and that isn't good.

The market needs to figure out Apple sans Jobs.

Which is only going to happen if a post-Apple Jobs continues to excel. Might take a few years for the markets to be convinced.

You don't think Steve will have prepared his company for this? He treats Apple like his own child, and rightly so.

> like his own child

It might not be a good thing, then.

> In California, my mother had raised me mostly alone. http://valleywag.gawker.com/357073/lisa-brennan+jobs-on-her-...

> She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity, claiming that he was sterile; he later acknowledged paternity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Personal_life

As far as one can tell, it looks like she turned out OK (the little I've read of her writing is hella good) ...

to be candid, if it was a short-term situation I don't think it would have been announced, based on previous Apple practice.

thoughts are with them, as was mentioned above, tech things are more interesting when Steve is doing them.

stay hungry, stay foolish... (Steve's commencement address 2005)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&feature=playe...