Tomorrow Morning's Market Will be all About Apple

     Apple certainly shook up the market this afternoon after the bell with its earnings beat with a totally unexpected 7 to 1 stock split announced and an increase in dividends. A lot of people love this move. Like Jim Cramer:

     "Apple posted quarterly earnings and revenue that topped estimates Wednesday and announced a 7-for-1 stock split, fueling the stock higher after a temporary halt."

     "The company posted earnings of $11.62 a share, on revenue of $45.6 billion, blowing past estimates for $10.18 a share on $43.53 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters."

     "Apple also authorized a 7-for-1 stock split, addressing calls to share more of its cash hoard. While the split will not change the value of Apple's shares (seven shares at $75 each as opposed to one at $525 a share), it could make the company's stock more accessible to individual investors. Shareholders as of June 2 will get six additional shares for each Apple stock they own, and the new split-adjusted trade will take place starting June 9."

     "The board also approved a dividend increase of approximately 8 percent to $3.29 a share. The company additionally said it would boost the overall size of its capital return program to more than $130 billion by the end of 2015, up from its previous $100 billion plan."

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/101607071

     Some people love the move. Like 'activist investor' Carl Icahn expressed in his tweets:

     "Agree completely with $AAPL's increased buyback and extremely pleased with results. Believe we’ll also be happy when we see new products."

     "As we said at conference yesterday, we continue to believe $AAPL remains meaningfully undervalued. Many analysts fail to understand company."

Not everyone was so impressed.

      "It's a company that's trying to please Wall Street," Max Wolff, chief economist and strategist at Citizen VC told CNBC's "Closing Bell." "It didn't used to have to. Now it does. I think it's a huge milestone that they've realized they do and they're throwing meat on that. I don't know how transformative it is."

      "Apple's announcement that it would buyback shares, increase its dividend, and split its stock seven for one sent the tech behemoths's shares higher after hours."

     "But the move does little to staunch fears that the company is losing the innovation game to rivals, Google in particular, said Trip Chowdhry, analyst at Global Equities Research."

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/101608060

      While it's ipad stocks surpised to the downside the iphone numbers were a major surprise to the upside. Jim Cramer is on board 

      "All told, you get these kinds of shareholder friendly initiatives and solid results and "it ignites an otherwise dormant stock. Positive surprises tend to do that," Cramer said.

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/101608177

     UPDATE: Cramer's reaction to Apple. 

     http://www.thestreet.com/k/aap/_tscnav/index.html

      As an investor this is notable for two reasons-one because with a 7 to 1 stock split in June, playing this stock becomes a lot more plausible and I'm intrigued myself. Also it's important as these bang out earnings are expected to be a major market mover tomorrow. 

     "It's a shareholder friendly move. I can't deny that, but I think for the long term you want to see companies invest in new products and growth," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at Jones Trading. "It falls in line with the financial engineering and aspects like that that are driving the tape and I don't think it's healthy." But he said the Apple news should be a positive for the market.

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/101608177

     UPDATE 2.0: I just came across this article at CNBC before the news of course, that wondered if Apple would get ''bruised' after earnings as this is 'what history shows' even if they beat. 

      http://www.cnbc.com/id/101606832

      I love it-we get to see which is the road not traveled in real time. Unlike the debates among economists, sometimes you can prove a counterfactual wrong just by looking at what happened. 

     Right now I remain aggressively long in this market-probably too aggressive. I got lots of calls in both C and BAC as well as JNJ-that is Johnson and Johnson. The market has seemed very timid the last few days not wanting to do too much. However, JNJ has climbed over $100 finally-which is big as it took a long time for it to break that ceiling. Meanwhile, the market has seemed to not know what it wants to do with the bank stocks as they've been totally flat the better part of a week. However, BAC and especially C started to break out a little today. I notice that both C and JNJ are up exactly $.28 cents on considerable volume. I don't know whats causing this-normally you assume that the things are unrelated as the catalysts of one usually have little to do with the other. 

    However, if Apple has something to do with this, thank you Apple. I really only need some small moves in these positions to cash out big like I did the C puts a few weeks ago. 
  
   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/04/d-day-jp-morgan-misses-estimates-market.html

   The only way this could be it, is if a general bullish mood became irresistible so that most stocks as stocks rise-with only those who specifically having clearly bad news not joining in the action. In any case, while the bull position hasn't won for me yet-again, I've been a bull starting 4/7 a few weeks back-it's not been because of the bears-there's been no downside at all just that the banks have been stuck in consolidation mode. 

   If tomorrow can be a strong bull day it will be D-day 2.0 for me.