Apple Inc. (AAPL) Drop Causes Jeff Gundlach To Swap Sides

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has had its fair share of detractors in recent months, with one of the most prominent among them having bee Jeffrey Gundlach. The hedge fund manager famously advocated shorting the stock this time last year.

Jeff Gundlach Views on Apple Inc. (AAPL) Stock:

Now however, in an interview with CNBC, Gundlach says that he’d much rather be holding the company’s stock long than selling it short. According to the interview, Gundlach isn’t positive or negative on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock, but given a six month period and being forced to pick a trade, he says he’d go long.

Gundlach recently spoke at the Ira Sohn conference in New York. It was at that conference in 2012 that he advocated going short on the Cupertino smart phone maker. At the time the stock was trading at around $553. It rose to heights of over $700 before eventually falling to less than $400, legitimizing Gundlach’s view of the company.

At the 2012 conference Gundlach said that there’s very little Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) could do to continue exciting customers about new iterations of its products, and predicted that the company would fall into a period of stagnation. That hasn’t happened, but greater competition and compressing margins looked enough like it to prove Gundlach right on the medium term.

Early on in 2013, Gundlach was still recommending investors bet against Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, who has been a long term advocate of the stock for some time, had to defend the stock, a situation he appears to be heading for again in his battle with Jim Chanos over Seagate Technology PLC (NASDAQ:STX).

In January after a disappointing earnings report from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Gundlach said that the company’s stock was likely to hit lows of $300 before it recovered. That prediction proved untrue and in recent days, since the release of the firm’s March earnings, the firm’s stock has managed to regain enough of its value for many to see a comeback.

On today’s market, stock in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) fell by more than 1% to $451.27 at time of writing. Like so many other high profile stocks, the company’s valuation is a complex one based on the mood of investors rather than the company’s fundamentals. With Jeff Gundlach, one of the stock’s most prominent detractors in the last year, taking long over short things look up at Cupertino.