Once the darling of Wall Street, Apple (AAPL) shares have plummeted in recent months as investor sentiment turned sour. Many analysts believe the company’s current slump will be reversed as new products like the “iWatch” and Apple’s rumored HDTV launch — even Apple bulls who have pumped the brakes a bit still hold sky-high price targets — but one industry watcher believes Apple’s glory days in the market are behind us.
“Apple is a bubble. It looks like a bubble, acts like a bubble and is falling like a bubble,” ADVFN.com CEO Clem Chambers wrote in a contribution to Forbes. “A bubble doesn’t have to be created by total fantasy, a bubble is just something inflated by circumstances real or otherwise, that must deflate to some kind of ‘normality.’ Bonds are a bubble at the moment and that bubble will burst too.”
He continued, “Bubbles have their reasons but the law of averages when combined with the law of large numbers means that bubbles go pop!”
Chambers believes that the path Microsoft (MSFT) shares took, represented in the chart below, is “the likely shape of the future of Apple.”
But he warns that bears see Apple following in Dell’s (DELL) footsteps, or even BlackBerry’s (BBRY):
Recent regulatory filings revealed that the massive dive Apple took after hitting a record high ahead of the iPhone 5 launch was driven largely by huge hedge funds that pulled in billions while selling off Apple shares. Each of those funds still holds a large position in Apple, however, so it stands to reason that they would like to see Apple rebound from its current dip.
Apple closed down 0.62% at $446.06 on Thursday, off nearly 37% in the five months since it hit a record high of $705.07.[bgr-post-bug]
