High Finance Lesson Time! Know how to get analysts to start upgrading your multibillion-dollar company's stock to "Buy" status? Well, evidently all you have to do is publicly admit that you massively misforecast your inventory needs and you're going to miss two solid months of revenue from one of your major product lines as you shut sales down completely until you can get a replacement product out the door. Boy, we tell ya, some of this corporate finance stuff strikes us as just a little counterintuitive sometimes...

No kidding, though: following yesterday's revelation that iMacs are now effectively nonexistent until third-generation models ship in September, MacNN reports that Smith Barney has upgraded its rating on AAPL to "Buy" and figures that the stock might hit $37 sometime in the next year. Reportedly Smith Barney sees lots to like in the imminent "launch of iPod mini in Europe," the initial sales numbers for Euro iTMS, the advent of the HP-branded iPod, volume shipments of the all-dual Power Macs, the opening of Europe's first Apple retail store in London, and yes, even the new iMac coming in September. Following yesterday's AAPL drop, the firm states that it "would be aggressive buyers" given the new lower price.

And Smith Barney's not the only firm with that sentiment, because Macworld UK quotes analysts at Needham & Co. as saying that "near-term weakness presents an excellent buying opportunity, because the issue is one of supply, not demand." Needham had already rated AAPL a "Buy," but it's gone so far as to reiterate that rating in light of what we had figured sounded like pretty bad news. Apparently those analyst folks disagree, and if "Buy" ratings help Apple's stock regain some of the value it lost when news of the iMac snafu went public, then hey, we don't need to understand it. We just want the free money.

This all leads us to wonder what other seemingly bad news Apple could leak that might prompt even more analysts to climb onboard the "Buy" train. We're thinking that something along the lines of yet another miniPod delay would make a few analysts' eyes light up, while news of a catastrophic 90-nanometer G5 recall could bring virtually all of the firms into "Buy" territory. And a revelation that Steve Jobs has come down with terminal boneitis could lead to "Strong Buy" across the board. Who knew that bad news could be so lucrative in the long haul?