CodyWillard

Rebecca Diamond voices a funny radio ad for Scutify. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Here are the commercials for Scutify's new ad campaign that will be running for the next four weeks on SiriusXM channels Fox News, Fox Business and CNBC and starring Cody Willard and Rebecca Diamond. http://Scutify.com.

Crazy volatile out there. This is all part of the cycle though. As for the trying to game it -- if the reason the market is selling off the last 5% or so is because of #Ebola concerns then I expect a bounce back to new highs relatively quickly. If there's an economic/financial Black Swan (including if #Ebola spreads further), then it's going to be a long way down. I am indeed putting a little capital to work as I raised cash at much higher levels all year. Easy does it tho. Scaling in with tranches as usual.

Q. Hi, Facebook FB is one of your largest holdings. Did I read right that you are buying some more now? What price are you looking for?

A. Yes, I think $FB is monetizing the heck out of their users and that there's upside to the fundamentals. Earnings report is next Tuesday...and I'm admittedly nervous about it. Speaking of which, buying FB is hard right now. See my article today about why making the hardest trade is usually the right one.

Q. What happens to FB stock price if monetization is up but finally the specter of slow user growth/attrition raises its head?

A. That sounds like a phantom-permabear-not-actually-meaningful catalyst for Facebook and if it got hit on concerns about "slower user-growth/attrition" I'd probably start to scale into some longer-term calls like I did when it got crushed into the teens after its IPO LINK.

Q. What, if any, Apple Calls do you recommend into the next quarterly report or after today's Apple Product Event?

A. I'm not sure $AAPL's got a lot of near-term catalyst and/or upside, so I'd stick with common not call options for now. I don't think any of the new iPads that Apple introduced at today's event are a catalyst either.

Q. Cody, any opinion on oil?

A. Ebola concerns, right or wrong, are definitely impacting people's travel plans. If they can choose not to travel, they're not. I don't think oil can rally until #Ebola is contained globally and here in the US. That said, I do expect them to contain Ebola in coming days and weeks and months and that Ebola Oil Discount would disappear and other catalysts will be driving oil's price at that point.

Q. Hi Cody, just wanted to say thanks and good job. Do you expect the markets at all time highs next year? Any comments on gold and gold stocks?

A. Thanks for the kind words -- nice to hear that kind of feedback on an ugly day in a down market and not just when stocks are at all-time highs! That said, yes, I do think stocks will get back to all-time new highs in the next year and then maybe on higher from there. We'll play it as it comes though. Gold is suddenly a safe-haven again and it's got an Ebola-premium that's not quite as large as oil's Ebola-discount. I own my physical gold coins and bullion that I bought over the last couple years and plan on holding it pretty much forever.

In his letter to Apple today, Carl Icahn lists a litany of reasons why Apple’s stock is undervalued and how to get it up closer to what he thinks is fair value right now. I’d like to welcome Carl Icahn, once again, to the “Apple’s undervalued” camp. But I think he’s missing the main reason that Apple isn’t at $200 right now — and that is because it is and always now will be, Steve Jobs-less.

I’ve proudly owned Apple since it was trading for less than the cash on its balance sheet, back $1 per share back in March 2003, in large part because I thought that with Steve Jobs having returned as CEO that Apple was poised to become a great Revolution Investment.

One of Steve’s greatest attributes was that he was willing to take huge risks and develop crazy new products (like an MP3 player with a scroll wheel on it or a tablet computer called iPad) and platforms (like iTunes or iOS). The biggest (only?) risk that Tim Cook’s had Apple undertake is the upcoming Apple Watch. If Steve Jobs were running Apple today, the Apple Watch would definitely have been called iWatch (remember how Apple had to pay up to buy the iPhone name from Cisco?). And the Apple iWatch would have been out last year or the year before.

If Steve Jobs were alive today, I bet the iPhone wouldn’t have changed the size of its screen as Steve Jobs famously thought he’d found the perfect size for the iPhone screen. Rather, we’d now be closer to a credit card thin iPhone running an iOS that would already include live widgets. Steve Jobs would have been pushing innovation in the iOS rather than playing catch up with Android as Tim Cook has done.

Finally, if Steve Jobs were alive today, I don’t think that Apple would be paying a dividend. And ask Warren Buffett about trying to advise Steve Jobs to buy back Apple stock. Rather, Steve loved his cash hoard. Scutify Factoid of the day for you: If Apple had never paid a dividend or bought back any shares, it would likely have another $130 billion in net cash on its balance sheet — or more than $40 per share, or twice its current cash balance under Tim Cook.

Clearly, nobody knows exactly what left turns and changes and other products and ideas the late, great Steve Jobs would be working on right now. But having owned the stock throughout the greatest run in its history, from March 2003 to October 2011 when he passed, I remember a lot of lessons and insights that Steve Jobs provided us over the years. In the 2006 interview below, I was totally channeling my inner (wannabe) Steve Jobs.

As for Carl Icahn’s $203 price target? Here’s an article from back in 2010 called when $AAPL was at $35 called “How Apple could get to $1500 by 2015.” That $1500 price target is actually a $214 price target (factoring in the 7-to-1 stock split since then). Icahn’s late!

Apple is cheap by many metrics, that’s for sure. At a similar multiple to, say, $GOOG, $AAPL would over $200. If Steve Jobs were still running Apple and the company had $40 per share in net cash plus the higher sales from more innovative product rollouts over the last few years that I just outlined, the stock would probably be over $200 a share. So call it the Tim Cook discount, and tell Carl Icahn all of us Apple shareholders, even us long-termers, feel his frustration. I’d also bet that Carl Icahn would not be going activist on Apple if Steve Jobs still ran Apple.

As I told Sony’s Doug Morris when I met him a few weeks ago and we talked about technology ”I’ve been riding the Apple train for more than a decade.” He said to me, “That’s a great train to have been on.” It still is, even with the Tim Cook discount. Stick with Apple.

Samsung Electronics warns on growth expectations as it forecasts 60% fall in quarterly profit (it could have been worse frankly, probably will get worse). Guess who’s been short $EWY as a way to short Samsung in the US and predicting the downfall of Samsung? That’s right, we have.

Details include specifics that are exactly what we’d expected when we first put on our short EWY South Korean ETF to get exposure to Samsung’s peak and now, subsequent fall. “The world’s biggest mobile phones and TV maker said it expects an operating income of 4.1tn won ($3.8bn; £2.5bn) for the three months to September. That is below analysts’ expectations for earnings of 5.2tn won. Samsung’s mobile division, its biggest business, has been struggling to maintain its dominance against rivals such as $AAPL and Chinese smartphone-makers Xiaomi and Lenovo.”

As I wrote back in January 2013, “Samsung’s products, especially the Galaxy S III, have been selling like gangbusters, but not all reviews I’ve read are stellar. At some point, it’s inevitable. The Samsung wave too will crash. Hard. And the risk to a manufacturer like Samsung is that when that tide changes, its margins can plummet. Do you have a Samsung ecosystem? Or an Android ecosystem? Isn’t Google the platform play that I preach about so much. Platforms create revolutions. Revolutions make great investments. Hardware vendors with nothing to lock you in to their brand do not create revolutions.”

I’d also explained at the time that Samsung was “riding a wave of popularity and sales that’s reminiscent of Nokia in 2008. Or of Motorola in the Razr heydays. Or of Research In Motion when everybody wanted a BlackBerry. But wait a minute. How’s Nokia doing today? Or RIM? Google swooped in to play white knight for Motorola last year — for a fraction of the price the company was valued at in its Razr prime, and it remains to be seen how quickly (if?) the handset manufacturer can be turned around.”

So here we are and I hate to say because South Korea’s economy needs the earnings from Samsung, but I do think Samsung’s future is playing out exactly like the Motorola, Blackberry, Nokia cycle’s did as they fell from dominant to single digit marketshare over the years after they peaked. Thusly, I want to remain short the EWY and would look to build up short positions in the EWY and/or buy some long-dated puts on EWY.