The This is MacO-S-Kinn. A word on words from the Wall Street Journal, another unprovable prediction, and Netflix

edges away from Apple. It's Monday the 31st of December 2018. I'm Ken Ray and this is news from MacoS Ken

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Happy New Year, Apple.

Have another hit piece from the Wall Street Journal.

The headline, The Investment that cost Apple $9 billion in 2018, the

tanilizing first line. Tech Giant used much of its windfall from tax overhaul to buyback shares, but recent plunge in stock prices

make strategy look like a bad idea. Basically Apple spent about $62.9 billion on buybacks in the first nine months of 2018.

That's an underperforming investment in the journal's words.

To illustrate that point the piece points out that those shares are now worth 53.8 billion,

some 9.1 billion dollars less than Apple paid. In effect, says the piece, the market has told them they overpaid by billions of dollars.

The piece goes on to say companies contend that buybacks are a good way to return excess capital

to shareholders and that the paper losses can

reverse themselves if their stocks rebound.

But the sharp declines call into question their decision to devote so much of their tax savings to buy backs rather than using it to invest in their businesses, raise employee pay or pay higher dividends.

So many arguments one could have with the piece, starting with the fact that this is not strictly an apple thing.

In fact, the journal notes that applied materials, a company deep in the semiconductor supply chain, lost 1.8 billion in

share buybacks, while Wells Fargo lost 2.7 billion in share buybacks, and Citigroup lost 2.7 billion in share buybacks and Citigroup lost 2.8 billion. But they're not in the headline. Nor is the headline,

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