4 stats that show Apple alone could take out the US stock market gains to a large degree

[stockholmer]

Apple now makes up close to 17% of the the NASDAQ 100 Index weighting.

Apple now makes up almost 4% of the S&P 500 Index weighting.

Apple's earnings represent 43% of the year over year S&P 500 profits increase from Q4 2011.

Apple's stockpile of 100 billion dollars is larger than all but 56 NATIONS entire GDP's.

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At what point does Apple gain so much power that it becomes too big to fail as well in terms of any price being paid to appease it? Also, at what point does the 'what is good for Apple is therefore good for the USA' meme allow for carte blanche in terms of oversight by Apple of rules and laws that are designed to regulate business for the good of the citizens?

[postulater]

1. Stocks aren't the economy

they are just people with extra money gambling that someone else will value more than they will in the future.

[Lucky Luciano]

2. AAPL is thoroughly unleveraged. Hard to fail like a bank. nt

[banned from Kos]

5. The key point. With zero debt it more like Fort Knox than some house of cards.

Of course the stock price could retreat on lower sales.

But its still cheap on an EPS basis. Its cheaper than Nokia which is about 6-7 dollars a share last I looked.

[Owlet]

3. This is what happens

when everybody gets an iPad for Christmas. Totally predictable. Here's another take with AAPL as currency (or gold - take yr pick)

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/losing-graciously

[Pholus]

4. At some point, Apple is the inverse of what is good for the economy.

Except for a diminishing number of design/software positions and many lower pay retail jiobs Apple IS a foreign company now, just one with a fair number of U.S. stockholders. As Apple's future improves I cannot see any particular reason all of those ties will not start to shrink.

This was PLAINLY evident in Jobs' last public conversation with President Obama and in Apple's STATED position that the U.S. workforce no longer has the motivation or skill set for them.

Another victory for the cheap labor movement. Why shouldn't everyone be cheap labor? Given the numbers, it obviously works.

Now I need to rethink my positions on ninteenth century America. From the civil war to the robber barons, perhaps cheap labor was always the way to go.