Somebody at CNBC has decided to hype the fact that Apple's (AAPL) $8.81 drop today is the worst one-day decline since autumn 2000. I guess that's true if you're looking at points but I'd argue that you should look at percentages. Alternatively, one could look at market cap. Based on that measure they certainly did lose a lot of capitalization today -- about $7 billion. But even using market cap isn't really a fair comparison since Apple Inc. is so much bigger than it's ever been. Most normal fluctuations these days are going to be bigger moves than in years past.
For my money, I'll stick with doing percentage based comparisons. As I've said many a time, percentages are the way to go if you want to make fair and reasonable comparisons. The simple point comparisons make good headlines for mainstream media when they write things like "Dow Makes Quickest Ever 1,000 Point Move" or "Biggest One-Day Decline in Apple in 7 Years" but beyond that, they're pointless. Just by eyeballing Apple's chart I noticed several declines which were larger than today's:
- -17.13% on July 18, 2001
- -15% on June 19, 2002
- -12.43% on July 17, 2002
- -9.21% on April 14, 2005
- -7.08% on November 7, 2002
- -6.33% on February 6, 2006
- -6.29% on October 16, 2003
- -6.19% on January 18, 2007
Today's $8.81 drop was only a 6.13% loss. To me, losing 15% or even 6.19% of my money is worse than losing 6.13% of my money but that's just me.
Yeah % change of stock price is the way to go, as long as you are looking at split-adjusted prices. % change in market cap would also do. Headlines like "largest drop ever" are like crack cocaine to financial reporters, though. They are completely unable to resist.
It's 4pm here in the southwest and 7pm in NYC. I see that Apple is up 2 points from the close Tomorrow should be a good one....we'll see.
hope your vacation is doing well for you -
paul
You're 100% spot on Mike. You can only measure or make comparison based on % and the hard figures are for attention grabbing headlines.
Biggest ever moves (in both directions) are records that will continue to be broken way after we've all left this place by the very nature of the fact that the stock market will always continue to rise in the long term and the base valuation will always be bigger.
CNBC rules dude. why even question their greatness. asshat :))
So now what? Apple best one day pop? After market is going over 150!
I would like a CNBC that only shows what goes on during commercial breaks. Fast Money rocks though.
Wow...I fear for anyone that got short yesterday. KaBOOM! Apple keeps on chugging. Love it.
Reporters are marketers, not traders. Their goal is to sell more newspapers, magazines, etc., and they do it with headlines. Which means headlines are only a mediocre measure of truth.
That said, you gotta go with percentages. Otherwise, you'll get stopped out too early on good trades.