If you happened to buy any Apple stock since the last presidential election, you're probably feeling pretty good about it now; after all, AAPL has been trending higher for ages, and in the past couple of weeks it's been reaching new four-year highs every other day or so. True, it's still got a long way to climb before it scales that cliff it drove off of when the bubble popped, but think of it this way: AAPL has had a higher return than the stocks of both Microsoft and Dell for the past five years. It's also been a better investment over two years (vs. MSFT; vs. DELL), over one year (vs. MSFT; vs. DELL), or over any shorter interval you'd care to try. Throw that in the faces of the Windoids the next time they taunt your platform choice. (And if you want to see something really funny, check Apple's stock performance against Gateway's.)

The good news is that some analysts just see things getting better and better. Forbes reports that Piper Jaffray expects Apple to "grow its market share ahead of expectations" over the next couple of years, "which will be a catalyst to its stock." The idea here is that Apple's "hey, everybody, look-- it's a computer that looks like a giant iPod" iMac G5 marketing campaign will be a roaring success, as "greater-than-expected adoption of iPods" (including the new Hewlett-Packard models) translates into "acceleration in sales of Macintosh computers," which is where the real money is. Indeed, reportedly "40% of resellers surveyed said PowerBook sales are 'tracking above plan,' while 30% said iBooks are selling better than expected." Stick it all in a blender and hit "FRAPPE," and the firm officially rates AAPL as "Outperform" (that's analystspeak for "Thumbs Up, Baby") with a $40 price target. Nice.

But hold the phone, there, Betty-Lou-- not all the analysts agree. CBS MarketWatch reports that Credit Suisse First Boston has cast itself as the party pooper, here. The firm does agree that Apple's "strong product lineup and new product introductions" put it in a good position for growth, but insists that "Apple's lofty valuation" will prevent investors from reaping the benefits. In other words, CSFB thinks that AAPL is already trading at a price higher than the company's prospects warrant, and it figures that the price won't be any higher than $35 in a year's time, regardless of how many more iPods and Macs the company manages to sell before then. Furthermore, the firm figures that since the stock is currently "trading near its 52-week high point," "we can infer that the outlook for Apple shares have become more uncertain as they soared this year."

Wait a minute. Are we understanding this correctly? Are they saying that, because the stock is as high as its been all year, that implies it's about to go down? Because it's been near its 52-week high for going on two years, now, and it just keeps going up. By CSFB's logic, shouldn't the stock have crashed well over a year ago?

Whatever. The main point here is that AAPL's doing well, and everyone seems to agree that Apple's in a good position to grow. And even if the stock price doesn't budge another cent next year, wouldn't you rather have, say, a 4% market share anyway?