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“The sidelines are not where you want to live your life. The world needs you in the arena!” – Tim Cook

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

After the US launched new strikes on Iran over the weekend, and President Trump threatened to blow Kharg Island to “smithereens”, crude oil prices are more than 3% higher, while equity futures are modestly in the red. Treasury yields are up, with the 10-year yield up 2 basis points to 4.74%; gold is down another 0.7% to $4,500 while Bitcoin is down 1% to just above $78K.  The economic calendar is quiet today, with the Dallas Fed Manufacturing report for August being the only report on the calendar at 10:30 AM Eastern.

In Asia, markets had a quiet start to the week, with no major index moving more than 1%. The Nikkei and Hang Seng both fell 0.1%, while the KOSPI rallied 0.5% and onshore Chinese stocks gained nearly 1%. The rally in China came despite both its manufacturing and service sector PMIs showing mixed results relative to expectations, but both remaining under 50%. Regarding the consumer, Retail Sales in Japan were better than expected, rising 4.0% versus forecasts for an increase of just 3.2%, but in South Korea, results were weaker as sales contracted 2.4% relative to June.

European markets are also starting off the week on a quiet and mixed note. The STOXX 600 is down 0.1%, led lower by the DAX, which is down 0.7%. Italy, France, and Spain are all modestly higher, while the UK is closed for a bank holiday.

One of big tech’s great laggards, a company that has watched the AI boom from the sidelines, is losing its CEO tomorrow. You’re probably wondering how badly the stock has done under his leadership. Up 2,280% in 15 years. The CEO is Tim Cook, and his run has been so “bad” that AAPL shareholders now face the same unease they felt when he took on the impossible task of succeeding Steve Jobs. In this case, “succeed” is an understatement.

When Tim Cook took over at AAPL, the company had a market cap of less than $350 billion. Today, the market cap is nearly $4.7 trillion. In other words, more than 94% of Apple’s current market cap was created on Cook’s watch. During this time, AAPL has performed more than four times better than the S&P 500 and more than twice as well as the Nasdaq.

While AAPL has blown the major averages out of the water since Tim Cook took over in August 2011, AAPL is only the 37th-best performer in the S&P 500. The top three performers during this span have been Nvidia (NVDA), up over 66,000%; Tesla (TSLA), up nearly 22,000%; and Micron (MU), up over 17,500%. Next to these stocks, AAPL does look like a laggard!

For all the criticism of AAPL, the stock continues to trend higher. Heading into last weekend, the stock closed 7% below its all-time high from about a month ago. Since the gap down after earnings, though, it has been quietly trending higher with a series of higher highs and higher lows.

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