BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Data Shows Confidence in Apple is Actually Returning. Can It Make a Difference?

This article is more than 10 years old.

Strange though it may sound, the public at large, and the commentariat, is beginning to take a more sober view of Apple 's future. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, confidence is returning. And many of the emotions surrounding Apple are turning positive, even as the critics sharpen their knives for Tuesday's earnings announcement.

Confidence might have resurfaced a little late in the day, as institutional investors now seem to be lightening their holdings of the stock. But it is relevant to how the next few weeks play out.

Apple is an emotive company and its stock price reflects that. A solid argument has been made here on Forbes to say that the share price last year had all the hallmarks of a bubble and now we are witnessing the bubble burst.

However, Apple's management team last year could have pressed on and expanded the company considerably, easily justifying its valuation.

In The Elastic Enterprise, Nick Vitalari and I argued that the company's platform and ecosystem model gave it a new way to scale an enterprise - and it would have been no surprise to see it keep on growing.

As it is, management still managed to create an absurdly profitable company.

But now we are in emotional territory and these charts map the emotions out. The first chart above shows how optimism in Apple, though low, has begun to grow again.

The data is provided by marketpsychdata, who track individual emotional sentiments (rather than just buzz) in a stock, across thousands of online publications (news, analyst reports, blogs).

While the first chart, above, shows optimism low but growing (bottom line) it also  shows uncertainty to be high, and Apple's reputation for innovation flatlining for most of the year but now beginning to pick up.

What's more surprising is that Apple seems to have been surrounded by uncertainty even in the good times, an indication of the emotions surrounding the stock .

Move on to the second graph, below, and you see optimism, joy and trust. And note how low trust fell to when the stock hit its peak.

But now trust in Apple seems to be returning, along with optimism. The "joy" line shows less upward movement for sure but all three are moving in a positive direction.

As Apple is an emotional stock, however, it's reasonable to conclude from the charts that the emotional rout is over.

But the reality is that analysts are only just catching up with the emotional downswing. That might mean a little more grief this week before the return of confidence has an impact, maybe later in the year.

Follow me on Twitter @haydn1701 or join me on Facebook. I am here on Google