Apple Shares In Sharp Decline: Is Cupertino’s Success On Borrowed Time?

They say that what goes up, must come down. Since the beginning of the year, Apple’s stock has broken record high after record high. It has climbed and climbed to heights no-one could have predicted, rising by 43% this year.

Many began to wonder if a ceiling could ever be placed on Apple’s fortune, and some even tipped it to become the world’s first trillion dollar company. But then yesterday, something interesting happened.

Apple’s shares fell by 4.1% in a single day. This fairly substantial plunge marked the pinnacle of a five day slump. As you can see from the graph below, there’s been a decline that began last Wednesday, a stark contrast to the normally substantial inclines we’ve all become accustomed to when watching AAPL.

When I first saw this, I’d only switched to Bloomberg whilst I was eating breakfast, and had my mouth been full, there would have been fried egg everywhere. On some further research, Apple is down 9.9% from a peak of $644 last Tuesday, only 0.1% away from ‘correction’ level, for a company that’s seen growth like Apple’s, that’s incredible. (Incredibly bad)

Apple’s losses accounted for two-thirds of Nasdaq’s 0.8% decline yesterday, and the drop wiped more than $50 billion from Apple’s market capitalization. Without Apple, the S&P 500 would have actually risen yesterday. Making the alarming numbers all the more confusing is this:

This is AAPL today, the rise has almost completely compensated for yesterday’s drop, and the overall trend is up, suggesting that Apple may again start to rise after a brief period of economic shrinkage.

Or was it just a brief period? Recently, analysts have only pointed upwards when it comes to predicting Apple’s financial destiny. But is there a limit? Have we finally reached the point where Apple simply can’t grow any more?

In my opinion, yes… and no. Whilst Apple’s new iPad will surely boost their financial success in the next few months, I believe that Apple has currently reached a point where it can’t grow any more, or if it hasn’t, it will do soon. Yes, we will probably see Apple make more money throughout the next fiscal year, but Apple are currently riding on the success of products it already has, that can only go on for so long.

I reckon it’s high time Apple cried havoc, let loose the dogs of war, and released another truly revolutionary product. The iPod, revolutionary. But it’s been around since 2001. The iPhone, 2007. The iPad 2010. The Mac, 1984! You get the picture. If you’ve got any thoughts on this, leave a comment below,