I Am Wrong About Everything Except the Housing Market
A few days ago I stated:
1. Apple will release iPhone sales numbers on the 20th.
2. Since Apple sold nearly a million units in the first few days, they may have sold 3 million by now.
According to AT&T, I'm full of beans. They only sold 146,000 iPhones in the first two days. Let's extrapolate from there.
146,000 in two days is 73,000 per day. It's been 26 days. If their rates stay consistent, that's a hair under 2 million phones. I don't know if their first day sales are higher because of pent-up demand, or if the sales have sped up due to amazing reviews. But either way, approximately two million seems like a reasonable guess.
And the other factor is that AT&T has reported *activation*, whereas Apple will report *sales*. If 98% of phones are activated, the 2% difference is still a hefty chunk of change. But I suspect more than 2% of people had trouble activating. It could be as high, or higher than, 10% in those first few crazy days.
But the housing market? With the additional gloomy news? I nailed that one. Over the last 5 years, everyone's favorite phrase to describe the inevitable slowing in home sales was "soft landing". As is, "housing sales can't go up forever, but actually go down? That's impossible!" And while I didn't expect total financial Armageddon, this painful, prolonged housing downturn that "no one could have predicted"? Many of us did. It was actually kind of obvious if you did the math.
Comments
Not that we have a subprime loan. We're not crazy.
You are amazing! You need to work for the Feds or Wallstreet! :)