Apple’s loudest activist investor just dumped his stake

I find it a bit ridiculous Carl Icahn can go on &quot;Power Lunch&quot; on CNBC, speak for a few minutes, and cause investors to go into a selling frenzy (not only AAPL, but the entire market NASDAQ and DOW was affected).<p>Securities are so easily multiplated and affected by CNBC and their interviews, it is a bit scary. Perhaps even more scary are reporters who basically write opinion pieces and affect security prices.<p>Looking on Carl&#x27;s twitter (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Carl_C_Icahn&#x2F;status&#x2F;725717908056330241" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Carl_C_Icahn&#x2F;status&#x2F;725717908056330241</a>) he even said he was going on &quot;Power Lunch&quot; before he did. Of course it would be hard to know what news he was going to deliver, but you have to think some people &quot;in the know&quot; had an idea and made some money today.

Bad press, but good riddance. I can&#x27;t imagine Apple has much use for out-of-touch &quot;activist&quot; investors clamoring for short term growth and dividends while complaining about their lack of &quot;innovative&quot; new products like … television sets.

&quot;Just?&quot; He finished his position in February. It almost feels like he sees stock pressure and is piling on to get back in at a lower price.

I wonder how many people here read&#x2F;looked at the interview. Icahn said he was interested in buying Apple again, but thinks there are market risks and that the Chinese government seems keen on interfering with American tech companies. He said that he has faith in Apple as a company, just not the stock at its current level in this environment.<p>All very sensible reasons to get out of a position if you think it may be dead money for a few years. He made millions&#x2F;billions from his position (he did the same in Netflix and sold that entire position.) Icahn is no dummy. Those calling &quot;activist&quot; investors as all Gordon Gekko types, looking to gut companies, are living in fantasy. In his interview Icahn actually calls out CEOs for running companies into the ground and using golden parachutes.

Good riddance. Apple literally can&#x27;t issue enough dividends or buyback enough of their stock to not grow their cash stockpile.<p>Why shouldn&#x27;t Apple just go private?

People go nuts over Facebook selling, again, $1&#x2F;month per subscriber. Their entire income is 50% of Apple&#x27;s profit. People go nuts over Amazon finally profiting 500M in a quarter which is 1&#x2F;20th of Apple. If Facebook got $1&#x2F;month for every living person on earth they still wouldn&#x27;t get close to Apple&#x27;s non-hardware income ($10B). Maybe Carl can go irritate them for a while.

Interesting insight, Apple&#x27;s market cap is $600 B while it has ~$250 B cash&#x2F;equivalent.<p>So net of all their businesses valuation is more like $400 Billion? Less than Google and Microsoft?<p>Anyway I don&#x27;t think it is unfair for an investor to want company to pay dividends <i>when</i> it has no good use for that cash. Remember, Carl Icahn was the guy who spun off paypal from the sinking ship that is ebay.

I have been asking this question for a long time, and yet fail to find or get an answer that i could understand.<p>Why did Apple choose to buy back stocks? Was there any need for it?<p>What has buying back stocks and wipe them off ( instead of keeping them ) benefited to me as a shareholder? Some would argue without the buyback, their share prices would have dropped even more, but that would at least create a chance for me buy a more for what i think is of value. Now as far as i have concern, they have merely make the stock a lot less volatile with NO &#x2F; little dividends.<p>What has buying back stocks and wipe them off ( instead of keeping them ) benefited to Apple as a company? Those money could have been used somewhere else to create EVEN more VALUE instead of buying back?

Good riddance. He&#x27;s this noise box who keeps clamoring all the time.

I dunno, seems pretty reasonable to want a dividend payment. Apple is just sitting on a mountain of money and not doing anything with it, why keep all that cash out of the market?

I always wondered what the effect would be if all stock trade transactions has a minimum 24h ownership requirement. You MUST hold a stock&#x2F;option&#x2F;hedge for at least 24h before trading it off. I picked the 24h period rather arbitrarily.<p>Would anyone who actually knows anything about this care to enlighten me ?

With all the cash they have Apple could go private, what is the rational for staying public?

Uh oh, they&#x27;re doomed! DOOMED!!!