(TheReformedBroker) “My friend Brian likes to make himself feel better whenever he sees a hot girl walking down the street or waiting tables in a restaurant we’re eating at or working out at the machine next to him in the gym.  He says to himself (or sometimes out loud) that “no matter how hot she is, somewhere in this city there’s a guy dating her who is just absolutely sick of her.  It makes him feel better that even though he can’t have her, whoever does have her is totally over it anyway.  Brian is (mysoginistically) hitting on an important concept here about happiness and the trouble with establishing a new baseline happiness of comfort and expectation.”

“… after the close Tuesday night Apple severely disappointed The Street by reporting a quarter in which revenue was only 40% higher than Q3 2010, sales only came in $3.3 billion above the company’s own expectation.  Investors reacted by ripping 29 points off the share price over the next three days.  Talk about a hard-to-please group.  On the same night Yahoo shareholders rewarded the company with a 5% jump after they reported an earnings beat so small you’d need an electron microscope to see it.  Yahoo’s shareholders have absolutely zero expectations..”

“Sienna Miller is quite possibly one of the most gorgeous and talented actresses of the aught’s decade.  Had my friend Brian ever happened to hop onto a treadmill next to her at Equinox, his internal monologue would have sounded something like this: ‘Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod Ohmygod…..but somewhere, there’s a guy who comes home to that every night, and he’s just sick of it.’  And he’d have been right, because Sienna’s husband fiancé at the time was the actor Jude Law, who was so ‘sick of her’ that he began sleeping with the overweight nanny who was taking care of their his children.”

“Is it possible for a giant corporation like Apple to grow any faster when we’re talking about a $100 billion annual revenue run-rate?  Obviously not.  Was it humanly possible for Sienna Miller to have become any more desirable and alluring to Jude Law?  Short of magically sprouting an identical twin sister who would also be sexually available to the young man, obviously it was not.”

“Both Jude Law and Apple’s shareholders have had their baseline happiness adjusted higher and higher, to a point where ‘happiness’ is almost unattainable.  When you’re along for the greatest growth stock ride in history during a time when the overall markets produce nothing for everyone else, you have become spoiled to the point of no return.”

“Sienna can hardly do any more crunches and Tim Cook can hardly release any more iPhone iterations to ever keep up with the expectations.  Because the baseline happiness levels are simply too high to hurdle.”

Full Story: Baseline Happiness, Apple and Sienna Miller (TheReformedBroker)

(Interloper) “There is no conspiracy as to the selection of IPOs and secondary offerings beyond popularity. They are giving you what you want, what they can sell, and in a number of instances its crap, either in terms of objective business quality or the valuation levels stipulated at issue.”

“It is an axiom among professionals marketing investment ideas to long-only funds or individual investors (for all their faults, hedge fund managers are much better at this) that you know you have a great investment idea when it is completely unmarketable. Publish as many copies as you want, but stock ideas in out of favor sectors will sit and gather dust until the paper rots. What sells, both in term of ideas and new stock, are those in sectors that have been gapping higher for the longest time, despite the risk that said trend is nearly exhausted and valuation levels are approaching the ridiculous.”

“When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy! The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want.” — Steve Jobs (1996 Wired Magazine Article, Steve Jobs: The Next Insanely Great Thing)

“Referring back to Jobs’ quote, the fault is not in the networks or the investment banker, it’s with the audience.  If PBS started getting monster ratings for in-depth, intelligent documentaries, the other networks will quickly follow suit.  In exactly the same way, if investors stopped buying secondary offerings in hot sectors, which they freaking know is a bad idea but can’t help themselves, and entertained the better risk/reward potential of out of favor ideas, they would get more of them.”

Full Story: Zero Hedge, Steve Jobs and who’s really responsible for the despicable cesspool of new stock issuance (Interloper)

Possible early signs of market saturation for Apple, especially now that Google has released Android “Ice Cream Sandwich”?  (NotMakingThisUp) “But not one of Wall Street’s Finest — not one — asked about the most disturbing pattern coming out of Apple’s earning release: the measly 1% year/year revenue increase at Apple’s retail stores, the 26% year/year profit…”

Full Story: Apple: For What It’s Worth (NotMakingThisUp)