Apple Breaks Up With the Nasdaq After 20 Years… Tim Cook Refuses to Live With AI Degenerates

I think I owe you an apology, I wasn’t familiar with your game… -AI addicts realizing Tim Cook might have been right all along

For the first time since 2006 (like, before the Nintendo Wii existed) Apple has basically untethered itself from the Nasdaq 100.

Case in point: Apple’s 40-day correlation to the Nasdaq 100 just cratered to 0.21. Back in May? It was 0.92. Normally, that would be a YUGE cause of concern and would beg the question: “Is Apple’s growth cycle officially over? Are they about to become a pure dividend stock?” But in this stage of the AI mania, it actually signals that if this tide does go out… Tim Apple won’t be caught swimming naked.

While the rest of tech is sprinting around the casino floor throwing chips at anything labeled “AI,”(throwing cash at whatever stock looks even remotely exposed to ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever robot intern just replaced three middle managers) Apple is just… chilling.

Art Hogan over at B. Riley Wealth refers to it as an “AI whack-a-mole” environment. Investors are shooting first, asking questions later. Capex too high? Sell it. AI might disrupt it? Sell it. AI might not pay off? Also sell it.

Meanwhile, Apple never RSVP’d to the trillion-dollar GPU buffet in the first place. Because unlike the other Mag 7 neighbors, Apple’s not pouring obscene sums into AI data centers. They’re not promising sentient spreadsheets. And they’re not exactly at risk of Claude coding a competing iPhone in its spare time.

(Source: Yahoo Finance)

And the numbers back it up… Cupertino looks built to endure. Which is… mildly infuriating for the doom crowd.

Apple just delivered record quarterly sales, with iPhone demand holding steady and guidance coming in ahead of expectations. They’ve also got a product event coming in a couple weeks (which we all know always produces fireworks). Yesterday, the stock popped 3.2% while the Nasdaq 100 slipped 0.1%. That’s the third time this month Apple outperformed the index by at least 3 percentage points.

For February, Apple’s up 1.7%. The Nasdaq 100? Down 3.3%. And the Magnificent Seven index? Try Down 7.5%. That’s its worst month since March.

But before you get the idea the iphone-maker’s a safe-haven tech ETF all the sudden… It’s worth noting that the stock still dropped 8% last week and it’s trading around 30x forward earnings… which ironically is still richer than most of its Mag 7 buddies outside of Tesla. On top of that, analysts see revenue growth slowing to 6.7% by fiscal 2027. And then you’ve got the memory chip prices that are rising. Oh remember that long-awaited Siri glow-up… well, that might get delayed too. Translation: Tim’s still got quite a few kinks he needs to figure out.

Here’s the thing though… while Apple isn’t cheap and growth probably isn’t explosive anytime soon… hardware still feels safer than software in this AI roulette wheel.

Because the reality is, no matter how smart AI gets, it can’t 3D print you a new iPhone in your mom’s basement.

So again, everyone (including me) has been critical of Tim Cook’s almost non-existent AI plan… but now the market’s starting to view them as the grown up in the room as Meta, Google, and Tesla continue to start the earnings calls with “so you might want to sit down for this…”

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple, Tesla, Meta, and Google as mentioned in the article.