August, NOT bull's "memento"

Ala, 2000, Piper Jaffray’s analyst, Gene Munster, raised Apple’s (AAPL) price target to $211/share. At that price, we would be looking at a $178-billion market-cap for the entire company. That would equate to a price-to-sales ratio of 7.9x based on their current trailing 12-month’s revenues. That would only be cheap relative to an even more absurdly priced Research In Motion (RIMM) with a current price-to-sales of 15.6x. The delusional price target helped the momentum crowd bid shares of Apple higher by over 6-points even as Microsoft (MSFT) floated the possibility that it is considering the introduction of a mobile phone combining features of its Zune digital music player to compete with Apple’s iPhone. This is the second such announcement of a possible dent to Apple's iPhone margins and market share in recent weeks. The other being Nokia (NOK). A Google search of “Gene Munster” and “AAPL” will find all kinds of Apple cheerleading sites reminiscent of the Qualcomm (QCOM) and internet bubble daze in late 1999 and early 2000. Also, Yahoo (YHOO) was singled-out as Bear Stearns (BSC) “top pick.” Do folks still care what people at Bear Stearns say about anything? The Apple and Yahoo calls seemed to really get the juices flowing among tech stocks on the first day back from trader’s long Labor Day vacation in the U.S. Even though Yahoo is essentially an advertising company that has seen one of it biggest customers, supbrime mortgage lenders, evaporate in recent months.…..Oh, and Jim Cramer, the guy that said subprime was "totally irrelevant" on July 16th, 3-days before the Dow Jones’ record high and then cried “Armageddon” on August 3rd, as subprime became "relevant" is now wildly bullish again calling this month, the “September to remember.” Today, he declared tech to be “immune from housing,” and ended one shouting session with CNBC’s Erin Burnett with, “tech, tech and more tech.” By today’s close, the Nasdaq is now within 3-percent of its 6 ½-year high set on July 19th. Its four day advance is its steepest since 2003. The S&P 500 is now within 3.9-percent of its all-time high and the Dow Industrials is also within 3.9-percent of its all-time high. If there are still unresolved credit, real estate, commercial real estate, private-equity financing, hedge fund and/or structured credit issues still looming, the equity markets are totally oblivious to it. Or the other possibility--- essentially all of these concerns that essentially took three-to-five years to accrue, have been solved over the past 45-days or so. With the jobs report looming on Friday and the heightened possibility of a fairly active earnings warning season that will begin next week, I’m pretty dubious of the latter scenario. Gold rallied nearly $10/ounce and is among the few assets now trading high than its July 19th price level.