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Why Apple Stock Lagged the Market on Monday
Key Points A global bank maintained its equivalent of a sell recommendation in a new research note. It enumerated three reasons not to buy the stock. 10 stocks we like better than Apple › An Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) bear weighed in on the monster tech stock Monday morning, and it seems at least a few investors were taking its latest analysis to heart. They unenthusiastically traded the company's stock that session, weakly pushing it only 0.5% higher. Meanwhile, the benchmark S&P 500 index closed the day 1.5% in positive territory. Barclays is quite the bear In its new Apple take, Barclays reiterated its existing underweight (read: sell) recommendation on the iDevice maker. This, despite enacting a slight raise in its price target to $180 per share from the preceding $173. According to reports, Barclays' continued pessimistic outlook on Apple stems from three key factors. The first is the inherent weakness in the company's foundational hardware business. Growth in such products has been modest, and the bank's analysts pointed out that the seemingly robust growth in the company's just-reported fiscal third quarter was due to factors such as forward purchasing ahead of anticipated tariffs. The second is China, a crucial market for Apple. Barclays believes that intensifying competition will threaten the company's market share in the sprawling Asian nation. Concerned about regulators Finally, the bank is wary about potential regulatory difficulties Apple might have in its Apple Services segment. With increased scrutiny and regulatory action around app marketplaces like the App Store, the company could be hit with rulings that reduce its take from this lucrative revenue stream. Last week, Alphabet's Google suffered a notable legal defeat when its appeal against an unfavorable ruling in a case centered around its Google Play was rejected. Both regulators and courts seem to find the highly advantageous conditions of marketplaces like Google Play and the App Store distasteful. Should you invest $1,000 in Apple right now? Before you buy stock in Apple, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Apple wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $624,823!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,064,820!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,019% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 178% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 Eric Volkman has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Apple. The Motley Fool recommends Barclays Plc. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Why Apple Stock Lagged the Market on Monday was originally published by The Motley Fool Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
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Nvidia Pushes Back on China AI Chip 'Backdoor' Fears
Nvidia (NVDA, Financials) is flatly denying Chinese claims that its new H20 AI chip could be used for hidden surveillance. The Cyberspace Administration of China pressed the company for answers after reports of potential backdoor features. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 5 Warning Signs with NVDA. The H20 was built specifically for the Chinese market after the US clamped down on high-end chip exports. It's a toned?down version of the H100 and, Nvidia says, has no tracking hardware. Even with the political drama, demand is strong. Reuters says China recently ordered about 300,000 H20 chips from TSMC. Analysts think Beijing will keep buying while rushing to build its own alternatives from Huawei and others. For now, China's regulator hasn't announced any follow?up action. The chips will likely keep flowing, just under a brighter spotlight. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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22 minutes ago
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Why were US job numbers which riled Trump revised down by so much?
President Donald Trump has fired the head of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after the department revised down recent job numbers by more than 250,000. He says the figures were "rigged" to make his administration "look bad". Although the latest revisions were bigger than usual, it is normal for the initial monthly number to be changed and it has happened routinely under both Democratic and Republican presidents. How are the job figures collected? The BLS head - known as the commissioner - plays no role in collecting the data or putting the numbers together, only stepping in to review the final press release before its published, according to former commissioners. "My reaction was, 'That couldn't happen,'" says Katharine Abraham, who served as BLS commissioner from 1993 to 2001, about Trump's claims that the numbers had been rigged. "The commissioner doesn't have control over what the numbers are," she adds. The jobs report from the BLS is based on two surveys – one that collects data from about 60,000 households and another from 121,000 public and private sector employers. The estimates of job gains come from the survey of employers, often referred to as the establishment survey. It tends to be considered more reliable than the household survey because of its large sample size. A majority of the responses come from large firms, typically enrolled in a programme that automatically submits their employment information. BLS staff also run web surveys and telephone interviews. "The initial estimates of payroll employment are a preliminary look at what occurred in each month," the BLS told BBC Verify. "It is the quick but lower-resolution snapshot of what went on in the job market for a particular month. Because the revised estimates are based on more complete data, they create a higher resolution picture - and occasionally the revised data produce a different picture," it added. The bureau updates the figures in the two months following the initial monthly estimate, as more responses come in. It also recalculates the numbers annually to incorporate data from unemployment insurance tax records. "There are all of these career people who also have the data and if the commissioner were to try to change the numbers they would all know and it would get out," Prof Abraham says. How unusual are the latest revisions? The figures for May and June have been revised down by 125,000 and 133,000 respectively. The 258,000 combined reduction total for the two month period represents the biggest change since records began, aside from the months in 2020 following the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. However, there are adjustments every month and large changes are not unprecedented. In this case, many analysts were already expecting revisions to the June figures, which had showed an unusual rise in school employment during a month when most schools were about to close for the summer. Later responses also disproportionately reflect smaller firms, which are more vulnerable to changes in the economy such as tariffs, analysts note. The May figure was adjusted down largely in response to the June revision and is consistent with other data showing a slowdown. In records going back to 1979, the average monthly change to the jobs figures (either up or down) is 57,000, according to the BLS. But revisions tend to get bigger during times of economic turmoil. Aside from the most recent numbers and the 2020 Covid period, there have been eight other occasions since 2000 when the BLS revised down monthly job numbers by more than 100,000 - with most of these coming around the 2008 financial crisis. For instance, there was a 143,000 reduction to the January 2009 figure when President Barack Obama was in office. The BLS also said job gains for the entire year in 2009 were 902,000 lower than it first estimated - the largest full-year revision on record. The jobs created in 2024 under President Joe Biden were revised down by 598,000, though that was a smaller change than the more than 800,000 initially estimated - an update which also caused political fallout. Prof Abraham says updates are part of the process and she was not surprised to see such large revisions for May and June, given increased difficulty of collecting responses and lack of investment in new methods - and the wider slowdown in the economy, driven in part by new tariffs. "It's always difficult when you're at a point where things may be changing and then you add to that the fact that staffing has been constrained and the agencies haven't had the resources to invest in following up with respondents the way they might have in the past," she says. Have there been problems with the data in the past? Response rates have dropped significantly over the last decade, accelerating after the pandemic, raising concerns about the reliability of the data. For example, the response rate for the establishment survey was less than 43% in March, compared with more than 60% a decade earlier. Other countries, including Canada, Sweden and the UK, have been wrestling with similar falls. Response rates to the labour force survey have fallen to roughly 20% in the UK. In the US, the drop-off has sparked some efforts to explore new methods of data collection, including web-based surveys. But the significance of the problem remains a matter of debate. A review by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in March of this year, found that revisions in recent years were mostly in line with pre-pandemic patterns, which it said should be reassuring to those worried about reliability. What do you want BBC Verify to investigate?