Apple stock gets a boost

Apple stock has been floundering since falling significantly off its peak of $86.40 in mid January of this year to a close of $50.16, a significant 42% drop. Well help is on the way.

Apple reports its earnings on Wednesday, and these have expected to be off quite significantly. But on Monday, Shaw Wu, an analyst at American Technology Research predicted that the numbers could expect expectations.

Wu was quoted as saying – We anticipate Apple to report results at the upper end, if not exceed, its guidance of $4.2-$4.4 billion in revenue and 39-42 cents in earnings per share (EPS).

Apple stock rose this morning on trading up 4.36% to $52.87.

Wu’s estimates go against the tide on Wall street with many analysts expecting Apple to under perform. American Technology Research continues to rate shares of Apple a "Buy" with a price target of $75.

As we’ve noted before, Apple stock tends to swing quite irrationally during earnings periods, and trades much more on ‘rumour’ than most other stocks. Whilst Apple is clearly no longer a ‘one pony’ company, it is still more exposed to the vagaries of fashion than some of the other PC manufactures. For whatever reason Apple is very much caught up in the emotional buy side of the market.

Generally, reserving its new product launches to ‘events’, Apple is expected to launch some new versions of its current top of the line PC’s at its Developer conference in August.

As usual, the Apple fans, and investors will be listening for CEO Steven Jobs to utter the cliché – there’s just one more thing.