Bulls gained the upper hand in a two-day choppy trading battle between Apple pessimists and Apple optimists. Debating opinions about the iPhone-maker's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC 2024) were acting behind the scene. In all honestly, CEO Tim Cook's Apple Intelligence system announcement did not impress me, yet it succeeded in being persuasive for the market's crowd, reaching out to a relative majority of the expert community as well, which was even more important. Thus, I also decided to join the group of Apple stock purchasers for the first time in nearly two years.

Shares of Apple dropped by nearly 2.5% during the first day of the conference (Monday, June 10) and recovered the decline only the next day, which reflected the first foggy response. Well, a 7.25% upward movement on June 11 with a technical breakthrough to fresh all-time highs well above $200 per share, also convinced my mind and my money better than the company's verbal efforts at the WWDC 2024. I am still of the view that a proper stop loss is needed for this trade, being ready to sell out my modest stake in Apple at any level below $195. It sounds quite reasonable if we remember that it was a sharp jump outside a multi-month price range between $170 and $200 that served as a technical driver for a current shift to the bullish mood on Apple.

Apple's partnership with OpenAI's ChatGPT developers to integrate it into Siri voice assistant was not welcomed. As a bright example, Tesla top boss Elon Musk, who was previously a co-founder of OpenAI itself, immediately commented on X (former Twitter) that he would ban using Apple devices at his companies provided that Apple integrates ChatGPT at its operating system (iOs) level, because he considers this initiative as an "unacceptable security violation". He even added in follow up posts that all visitors to his offices would have to check their Apple devices at the door while they could be "kept in a Faraday cage" to block electromagnetic signals. “It’s patently absurd that Apple isn’t smart enough to make their own AI, yet is somehow capable of ensuring that OpenAI will protect your security & privacy!.. Apple has no clue what is actually going on once they hand your data over to OpenAI. They’re selling you down the river,” the billionaire investor declared. As for me, I also feel that not each and every person could be happy from allowing AI features to use all detailed personal information, including knowing all your preferences. It would be O.K. if Apple Intelligence would restrict itself to "delivering more personalized offerings" (according to Tim Cook) by performing simple and useful functions, such as getting flight information from your emails or searching restaurant reservation details that were sent in your text message, or even by expanding this to re-writing your own texts. But who can be well assured the AI would not go far beyond one's expressed permission. Of course, Siri will ask for the user's permission before connecting with ChatGPT, but the detailed set of consequences would be barely revealed at this entrance door to the rabbit's hole. At the same time, most updates for the new iOs do not look as new and perfect but rather look secondary. In the AI sphere, Apple innovations are still lagging behind other giant techs like Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

Anyway, I may throw up, but let me roll the dice! At least, most experts came to conclusions that Apple's AI announcement may reverse a slump in iPhone sales. A typical opinion is that many Apple's loyal fans who do not have the most recent iPhone 15 models would face the need to upgrade for having access to the new AI features. As a matter of fact, this may increase the speed of future iPhone models replacement before the end of the year to bring Apple more revenue growth.

Meanwhile, Apple sceptics are not appeased as well. "We will all get new iPhones at some point in the future, but we believe consumers will hold onto their devices longer to save money given the lack of compelling features," KeyBanc group of analysts commented. Analysts at Bernstein warned that the partnership relations between Apple and OpenAI partnership could become "revenue dilutive initially", as their agreement may include money sharing which may lessen the profitability of the searching process for Apple.

That's what it is made for and what it is sold for. Yet, let me bet for a $225 to $235 range of nearest price targets. An elevated price range looks like a baseline scenario for me, compared to a prolonged rally stage.