For a brief period in mid-December, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) appeared poised to become the world’s first $4 trillion company before the Fed-induced stock market wipe led its shares to a 2.14% 24-hour crash.
At least one executive, as it turns out, used the unprecedented highs well. Specifically, COO Jeffrey Williams sold 100,000 AAPL shares on December 16. The trade was executed at an average price of $249.97 and raised just under $25 million.
Williams’ sale was the first Apple insider trade recorded since November 15, when Director Arthur Levinson offloaded 200,000 shares and raised approximately $45 million. Levinson’s insider activity was the biggest recorded in 2024 – fitting, given he is the company’s biggest individual shareholder.
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Does the Apple stock insider sale herald AAPL share price crash?
Though it may register as suspicious, given the downturn that affected AAPL stock just days after the insider trade, it is unlikely that Williams’ sale is cause for concern.
The December 18 Apple share price collapse was not triggered by the firm’s inside issues but was part of a broad bloodbath that, in total, erased $1.5 trillion from the stock market in a single day.
Indeed, Wall Street analysts have been consistently bullish about Tim Cook’s company – even if their average 12-month price target is failing to catch up with the stock’s performance – with a big driver for optimism being the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into Apple products, as reported by Finbold on December 18.
Furthermore, investors keen on AI may have even more cause to celebrate as the technology giant is working to enter the Chinese market and is negotiating with local behemoths such as Tencent and ByteDanc , per a Reuters report from December 19.
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Apple stock price analysis
Finally, the overall optimism – and the assessment that Williams’ sale is not a sign of trouble on the horizon – is reinforced by Apple stock’s price chart.
While the December 18 downturn appears stark in the 1-day and 7-day charts, zooming out to the one-month time frame paints it as relatively trivial.
The same is true year-to-date (YTD), where AAPL shares are 33.40% in the green, and the 12-month chart, where they are up 27.11%, providing ample room for confidence that, even if the $4 trillion milestone is out of reach in 2024, it is a feasible goal for 2025.
