In 2009, Jobs was on leave from January to June with Tim Cook in charge. There was a dip in the stock when it happened, but it did just fine during the period of his absence (if you define "just fine" as going from ~ $82.00 to ~ $142.00)
I think after it all sorts itself out, it'll be fine.
I'm just not sure. Analysts have generally been clueless when talking about apple, and I don't see that changing. And now they're saying that things would be alright for 6mo to a year, no matter what. That's a code for: I'm selling first thing.
They'll sell today and tomorrow they'll see it's lower, think it's a bargain and all buy it back... These are not bright people (or rather they often are demonstrably very bright people who just hide it well with their words and actions).
IMHO not the best example : If they can sell today and buy it back lower tomorrow, then that's pretty smart. They own the same thing, but have $$ left over.
If that was their intention then yes it's smart but it seems it's rarely thought out that far in advance. And when by "that far in advance" I mean "tomorrow" it's a bit scary.
Today is a holiday, so there is no trading... but it is a weekday so the press will have this thing over and done by the end of today. Tomorrow it is old news.
Tomorrow is also their earnings announcement. That will have a bigger impact on the stock than Steve taking time off.
Tomorrow they will talk about Mac App store results, 10 billion apps sold, Verizon estimates and drop hints about revenue from their new products in 2011 (iPad 2 etc).
the numbers of shares is not important. Apples Market Cap is about twice the size of BP but even this is not important if you look at a relative change (%), not an absolute ($).
The second point is the important one... news that there was a really big problem was slow to come out. Eventually BP lost 50% of its value, but it took many weeks.
As heartless as this may sound, I think Apple stock will represent whatever the media says about his health. I hope he recovers to good health, whatever might be the problem.
My guess is they have, just not publicly. (Easy to argue the merits of that.) Pancreatic cancer doesn't leave too many survivors so I am sure the management team thought a lot about life without steve, at least at that time.
I agree, but I think it's less of an internal logistics issue and much more of a public image issue: Steve Jobs is so much the face of Apple as it sits currently, every time there's news about his health the stock fluctuates and that isn't good.
