A company's performance is not strongly correlated to its share price. By conventional measures, Apple has been outperforming its "competitors" for a long time

A company's performance is not strongly correlated to its share price. By conventional measures, Apple has been outperforming its "competitors" for a long time now, it's just that the market does not seem to reflect this in the share price. As to the "why", no one knows. Or maybe everyone knows, and they're all correct. What I would like to see is for Apple to split the stock. My totally unsubstantiated theory is that this should allow more people to get into the stock and better reflect the real market. A lot of people get into options due to the high price of the underlying, which is a rigged game since large hedge funds and big money can squish all the retail investors (you and me) into maximum option pain right at expiry. e.g. Jan 18 when AAPL was trading exactly at $500.