ROI: The $60 Billion One-Day ☕️ Meeting

It was May 10th on 57th Street. I looked her in the eyes and asked, “How’s the AI integration going?”

She replied, “It’s great; we are setting up the team.”

I said, “That’s fantastic! I’m looking forward to WWDC.”

She said, “Yeah, the team is getting in place.”

It was at that moment I knew—she messed up.

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When I got home, I watched reviews on their new M4 chip and how everyone was saying it was going to power the future of AI. I started to see newswires about potential deals with Google or OpenAI.

WWDC24 Will Disappoint $AAPL

Then it dawned on me: anyone with experience in HR knows nothing happens overnight despite our wishes. Any Apple AI initiative would take much longer than anticipated, which is very odd considering how big Apple is.

I got excited with the prospect of this meme, as I knew no one was discussing it.

It made me think: how could the street totally miss this?

After all, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world and is heavily covered.

Surely, lil ole me couldn’t have caught something no one else was seeing. So, I logged into Substack and began to chronicle the thesis with some historical precedence and left it at that.

So I wrote the following:

The suggestive use of AI and the word ‘Pro’ in their iPad release video seems aimed at boosting sales, as we may need to wait 2-3 years for greater machine learning integration across Apple’s entire product pipeline.

Than this happened…

After WWDC, Sam Altman said:

• That means a year?

Then Elon said:

• That means 2 years?

-That means a red flag to the EU - 3 years?

LMAO!

WWhat does this show? The Emperor $AAPL has no clothes—just a watch and goggles.

I wrote the following on May 11th, even mentioning Musk. Because of the accelerated pace of his work on AI, he has had a lot of bumps and bruises. Whatever Apple does, he would’ve had a few words.

In essence, all of us just manifested this to happen, didn’t we?

Despite the anticipation, we may need to think of AI in longer capex windows of 1-3 years. Apple’s substantial R&D spending, exceeding $175 billion since 2013 and reaching $29.915 billion in 2023 alone, and silence since Siri may prove this point. Another example of the slow rollout is Elon Musk’s

Musk questions, with a cash war-chest of $160 billion: What the heck has Apple been doing?

We know the answer: share buybacks with Tim Cook’s operational efficiencies. Where is the vision?

I’m not talking about the goggles.

The narrative shift to information security and privacy, and Altman’s declaration, all but ensures the rollout of ‘Apple Intelligence’ is very much in its early days, despite what the street and technology reporters were reporting.

Making for a very amusing neutral or short based on market intelligence gathered in New York.

It’s all the buzz right now!

This got me thinking of something much bigger: that with the right person, qualitative research with corporate access is worth billions and trillions in market capitalization.

Even with AAPL 0.00%↑ - we did it!

Why?

The Ivy League nepo baby in finance never really had to think like that. At the end of the day, they are still subservient to the trust fund—they need to be obedient if they want their share for their social clout.

I’m just interested in being right or wrong.

The real meritocracy.

Hedge Fund > Trust Fund

Embrace the inversions all around us.