Does anyone else find it interesting that whenever Apple posts larger-than-expected profits, its stock price barely budges? In fact, in recent quarters, we've even become accustomed to seeing it drop a few percentage points. Call us naive, but we would think that when a company releases end-of-quarter financial information revealing a sixth consecutive Street-beating profit, a record inventory level, year-over-year growth twice that of the industry itself, and all sorts of other goodies, the stock price would go up. Not that we've ever claimed to understand the stock market, mind you, but that's just our gut reaction.

So even though financial information tends to make our eyes glaze over as our thoughts wander to the eternal question ("Which is a worse made-for-TV movie title, Atomic Train or Mother, May I Sleep With Danger?"), we were surprisingly unbored by a recent ZDII Inter@ctive Investor article about Apple's tough stock battle. Apparently the problem is that Wall Street analysts just won't upgrade their ratings on Apple not matter how well the company performs, due to lingering prejudices and what Steve Jobs called the "Hierarchy of Skepticism" last year. Where the analysts go, the stock prices follow, and many analysts irrationally rate AAPL low because Apple's a "niche play" and not a good bet in the "long-term." Which is particularly ironic, according to the author: "Analysts are asking about Apple's outlook in three years and then talking up .com companies, half of which will crash and burn in that same time frame." Perhaps these analysts are just holding a grudge, since Apple keeps beating their estimates?

Chalk it up to long-standing prejudices, then. Apple may have made huge strides winning back the heart of the media, but Wall Street's wearing PC-colored glasses. On the other hand, the latest RFI Report hints that Wall Street may just have to sit up and take notice with all the developments Apple's got up its sleeve for the rest of the year. There's QuickTime 4, Final Cut Pro, Mac OS X Server, new iMacs, new PowerBooks, the consumer portable, and a slew of other stuff that none of us knows about yet. Personally, we think Apple might benefit greatly from releasing some product that Wall Street analysts just couldn't ignore-- perhaps the rumored "Executive PowerBook" described at O'Grady's PowerPage is just what the doctor ordered.