Trade Alert: Eight years ago, I predicted Apple’s $1 trillion market cap

Apple is officially worth a trillion dollars today. Want to know who predicted that Apple would be the first trillion dollar company years ago, long before anybody? From the LA Times back in 2011 when Apple was at less than $40 per share:

“MarketWatch’s Cody Willard was about four months ahead of Altucher on the $1-trillion call. He predicted it in September 2010.”

And Apple’s post-earnings report spike this today (and to a lesser extent, Tesla’s) has tech stocks back within a percent of their all-time highs from a couple weeks ago.

If you were freaking out a few days ago when tech stocks were getting crushed, if you were in pain and losing sleep over your portfolio at the lows last week — take this opportunity to do some trimming and raise a little bit of cash.

As for me, I do think I like my cash levels, but I also think that tech stocks are likely to struggle here for the next few months, if only to churn some weakhanded shareholders. I’m going to nibble a handful of QQQ puts with strike prices around $170 or a bit lower than that that expire out in November and December.

Again to be clear, I don’t think the Bubble-Blowing Bull Market we’ve been riding for the last eight years is over. But I also think there’s likely to be some pain, some pullback, some fear, some volatility, some downside in sectors that have really stretched valuations — and that means tech. As I keep talking about, so many middling tech stocks are trading at 10-12x revenues right now. I’m just going to nibble a few tech-sector puts (QQQ) to hedge our longs a bit more here. If the markets rally another 5% in the near-term, I’d be likely to do another tranche then.

Besides, while I don’t want to be coy, would it really surprise anyone of the tech stocks put in a short-term top on the day everyone is celebrating someone we predicted eight years ago — the first trillion dollar company?

PS. Later today or tomorrow, I’ll send out the transcript for this week’s episode of The Cody Willard Show which we streamed live this morning on Facebook and YouTube.

You can watch this week’s full episode on Facebook here or on YouTube here.

The Cody Willard Show is my once weekly 45-50 minute live show that you can find on Facebook, YouTube, Twitch TV, Periscope, Twitter and elsewhere. We also publish it each week in podcast form on iTunes, Soundcloud and Stitcher. And we send out a transcript of each show exclusively to Trading With Cody subscribers.