After Monday's close, Apple's performance for the year has finally quietly turned positive - the latest sign of the market's increasing favorability towards this iPhone manufacturer.
Market data shows that Apple's stock price rose 0.9% on Monday, marking the sixth consecutive trading day of gains. This has also helped Apple finally break free from the fate of a cumulative decline in stock prices this year - it has risen by 0.8% in the past five months.
The counterattack by Apple bulls mainly occurred in May. Apple's stock price has risen by approximately 13% in the month, marking its largest monthly percentage increase since July 2022.
Calculated by market value, Apple's market value increased by $336 billion to $2.94 trillion in May, returning to the doorstep of the $3 trillion club. Since January this year, Apple has never been able to cross this threshold again.
In fact, if measured by market value growth, Apple's market value growth rate last month was second only to Nvidia, which was coming aggressively behind it. This also seems to indicate that Nvidia may not be able to easily seize Apple, the world's second largest company by market value
Earlier this year, Apple's stock price fell as much as 14% during the year, and although it has fully recovered its losses, it still lags behind a series of other tech giants that have surged: the Nasdaq 100 index has risen nearly 11% so far this year.
However, the recent excellent performance of Apple's stock price has made many industry insiders start to have a higher outlook on its prospects. Compared to some other tech giants that are currently overvalued, Apple, whose stock price has just begun to rise this year, seems to have greater potential for the future.
From a fundamental perspective, the recent strong performance of Apple's stock price is largely due to its latest financial report released in early May. This financial report provides optimistic performance expectations guidance, easing external concerns about its growth trend and sales in the Chinese market. The company also announced the largest stock buyback program in US history, with a total amount of $110 billion.
More and more market participants have been optimistic lately that Apple's addition of artificial intelligence technology to its upcoming iPhone models will encourage more users to upgrade and provide a catalyst for its revenue growth. More details about Apple's AI strategy are expected to be announced at the Apple Global Developers Conference on June 10th.
According to insiders who revealed to the media last month, Apple is about to reach an agreement with OpenAI to introduce the latter technology on the new generation iOS operating system, as part of Apple's broader efforts to introduce artificial intelligence features to its devices. In addition, Apple was also exposed in March to have negotiations with Google, hoping to integrate Google's Gemini artificial intelligence engine into the iPhone.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote, "Introducing artificial intelligence technology into the Apple ecosystem will bring significant monetization opportunities in terms of services and iPhone/hardware."