Apple, NDA's & Penalties

Those of you who are frustrated with NDA's I share the frustration.

But nothing is kept so close to the vest that isn't a big deal.

Apple doesn't take kindly to leaks.


Fast Company

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports on a memo recently sent to all Apple employees stating that 29 Apple people were caught leaking secrets about planned products last year, and 12 of them were arrested. The memo describes in stark terms the implications for employees who leak and get caught: “These people not only lose their jobs, they can face extreme difficulty finding employment elsewhere,” says product marketing executive Greg Joswiak in the memo.

The memo lays out examples of times when whole product announcements have been spoiled by leaks to the media. The main facts about the iPhone X and the Apple Watch 3 had been leaked to the media before the splashy launch event, leaving Apple executives to go through the motions of delivering big surprises from the stage. Apple says leaked information can depress sales of existing product models, and give competitors more time to respond to features coming in future models.  “We want the chance to tell our customers why the product is great, and not have that done poorly by someone else,” the memo says.

Linked In, Brexit and Microvision

Of course, the conventional wisdom says that all of the fundamentals are priced into the stock and the charts predict the future. That if the price of the stock isn't going up the company isn't ready.

That may be the conventional wisdom, but recent events prove that the conventional wisdom is often wrong.

The Graph just below shows the probability of a "stay" vote over time. All the talking heads on television said "of course they'll vote to stay" people weren't even concerned about Britain leaving the EU. From BullionVault

What happened? What everyone knew for sure because of polling and "markets" turned out to be wrong. Yes, that's a better than 80% chance of "Stay" to 100% go when the vote was in.

Oh, and then there's the "you can't keep that quiet" camp. Everyone will squeal and the results will show up in the stock price before we get there. 

When it's really important, corporate secrecy can be incredibly powerful. The moves aren't telegraphed in the stock.

The best example of that in recent history is LinkedIn. Were you paying attention to it in the last year? Check out the chart: (From Finviz)

So, back in February, someone was pretty quiet about something, because they came out with news that cut the stock almost in half. Then earlier this month people who knew stuff were pretty quiet, because the stock then nearly doubled over night.

UPDATE:  And -- They had more suitors than we thought (recode) Facebook and Google also looked into buying them.

No matter what you may think of Microvision stock right now -- I know it's frustrating because I'm in it too -- they are purveyors of a cutting-edge technology, that is going to enable screens everywhere, and everyone wants portable, and everyone likes big screens -- and those things are incompatible unless you're using Microvision's tech. 

So, the stock is down right now. As the company is reporting an end to production troubles and new products are on the way --- and smartphone producers are calling the color blue a cool new feature.

It's going to be fantastic. Every bit of real and imagined and potential bad news is priced into the stock -- but the good news is not.