The Shine Will Return

At Friday's close, Apple was up 36% for the year, beating the NASDAQ's 27%.

The conventional wisdom is that Apple is a great company but just a mediocre stock. After announcing its September quarter results on Thursday night, AAPL fell 92 cents (0.52%) on Friday:

Apple said sales fell for the fourth consecutive quarter, including a decline in China that came as the company faces a broad economic slowdown in the country and new competition from rival Huawei Technologies...

The challenges in China have spooked Apple investors, sending shares down more than 10% since the company’s all-time high earlier in the summer. In late June, Apple became the world’s first corporation to close with a market value above $3 trillion.

The reasons that Wall Street has become less enamored of AAPL are simple:
1) Sales in China have fallen because the government has openly discouraged the purchase of non-Chinese products;
2) overall iPhone unit sales have declined world-wide;
3) services and new products aren't growing rapidly like Apple's peers, especially in artificial intelligence,
4) Apple's stock performance is the worst of the "Magnificent Seven" megacaps (Alphabet/Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla).

Your humble blogger has reached the age where he no longer fears missing out on the stocks that got away, believes that the shine will return next year, and is quite happy with 36%.