Most people don’t understand that bank analysts (the people whose estimates get averaged for every “Apple beats estimates” headline) are complete jokes. Research departments are there to support the sale of bank services, and making management look amazing by having lowball estimates creates good relationship with the IB desks.

The markets trade on whisper numbers, which are what people with skin in the game are expecting. This is why you often see a name that beats estimates and drops...it’s because they missed the whisper numbers.

I doubt that this played a role here. Apple traded more or less flat over the quarter. If there were whisper numbers of even better results than what turned out to be a massively successful quarter, one should have seen the stock price go up significantly over the quarter.

No, you’re missing the point. The “massively successful quarter” (which it was) is what the market expected. Which is why we traded sideways.

So your argument is that the market anticipated the current quarter some 8 months ago? That implies a rather psychic level of prediction.

Or perhaps massive option interest is keeping a cap on the stock. Once they expire, maybe there´ll be a pop.