Los Altos, California – Crowd Technologies, Inc. provider of the stock research site Piqqem, today announced the sentiment results for Apple Computer (AAPL) going into their earnings announcement on Tuesday July 20, 2010. In a stunning turn of events, sentiment for Apple has dropped 15 points to the lowest level in the past 15 months.
The above chart shows Apple’s sentiment dropping by 15 points from the beginning of the quarter thru today. In comparison, sentiment for the Piqqem Technology Index rose 2 points in the same period, which means Apple’s decreasing sentiment was not strongly influenced by market forces. On the Piqqem scale, Apple’s sentiment rating of 34.60 is still considered positive and indicates a quality stock.
This drop in Apple’s sentiment is certainly a cause for concern. Apple has consistently been a top 3 rated company on Piqqem’s top rated list and now doesn’t appear in the top twenty-five. At its peak, Apple had a sentiment rating of 58 at the beginning of the year. Is there any rational for the drop?
In analyzing the sentiment line, I can identify 2 primary issues. On April 29 Steve Jobs wrote his open letter regarding the state of Flash from Apple’s perspective and this corresponded to a 7 point drop in Apple’s sentiment. On June 24, Apple released the iPhone 4 which received some bad reviews and this corresponded to another 5 point drop in sentiment. As of now, both of these events remain more of a PR issue and Apple’s briefing last week about the iPhone 4 should put the company back on track.
Source:http://piqqem.com/blog/20100719-apple-sentiment-weakens-ahead-of-earnings-6
