Analysis: Apple’s swoon exposes risk lurking in mutual funds

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The nearly 28 percent decline in shares of Apple Inc since mid-September isn’t just painful to individual shareholders. It’s also being felt by investors who chased hot mutual funds that loaded up on Apple as the stock raced to a record $ 705 per share.

Apple makes up 10 percent or more of assets in 117 out of the 1,119 funds that own its shares, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Those big stakes have contributed positively to each fund’s annual performance to date, with Apple still up about 32 percent for the year. It was trading at $ 527.73 soon after the opening on Friday.

But that year-to-date outcome may not accurately reflect the performance of the funds for individual investors. All told, approximately $ 4.5 billion has been added to funds with overweight stakes in Apple this year, according to Morningstar data. The majority of these dollars were invested after March and after Apple first exceeded $ 600 per share – meaning many investors have been riding down with the decline.

The $ 302 million Matthew 25 fund, for instance, holds 17.4 percent of its assets in Apple, according to Lipper. The fund’s 31.9 percent gain through Thursday makes it one of the top performing funds for the year.

Most of its Apple shares were bought years ago at a bargain basement price of about $ 125 per share. But $ 158.9 million of the fund’s assets – or 53 percent – were invested after the end of March, when Apple was trading near $ 615 per share, according to Morningstar data.

For those investors that bought after March, all that concentration in Apple hasn’t led to a stellar gain but rather a drag on the portfolio. Someone who invested in Matthew 25 in early April has seen the value of the fund’s Apple stake fall about 19 percent, while someone who invested at the beginning of September has watched that outsized Apple stake drop 27.2 percent.

In turn, the majority of the fund’s investors have reaped a much more modest performance than its year-end numbers suggest. Since the end of March, the fund has gained 6.7 percent, according to Morningstar data, far less than its 31 percent year-to-date gain and about two percentage points more than the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index.

Since, September the fund is down nearly 3 percent through Thursday’s close, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 in that period.

The impact of Apple’s falling stock price shows some of the drawbacks of portfolio concentration, experts say. These stakes can leave the funds overexposed to the ups and downs of one company – counter to what most mutual funds are supposed to do for investors.

“Any time you get over 10 percent of the portfolio in one company it’s a red flag,” said Michel Herbst, director of active fund research at Morningstar. Many fund managers do have risk management rules that prevent them from devoting more than 5 percent to 6 percent of their portfolio to any one stock, he said.

Then again, some funds purposely invest in just a few stocks. Mark Mulholland, the portfolio manager of the Matthew 25 fund, said that taking concentrated positions in companies is the only way to beat an index over longer periods of time.

‘RIGHT-SIZING’ PORTFOLIOS

Along with concerns about iPhone sales in China and tax-motivated selling among people who want to avoid potentially higher capital gains taxes in 2013, the wide fund ownership of Apple may be a factor in the size of the stock’s recent declines, fund managers said. In addition, with so many funds already heavily invested in the high-priced stock, there may be fewer marginal buyers available to push prices up again when shares begin to dip.

“The stock didn’t go from $ 700 to $ 520 because people didn’t like the new iPad. It’s become a favorite short of hedge funds because they know they can get in on this,” said Mark Spellman, a portfolio manager of the $ 300 million Value Line Income and Growth fund with a small position in Apple.

Short interest in the stock rose to 20.6 million shares at the end of November from 15.1 million shares at the end of September, according to Nasdaq.

“Some of my competitors have 12 percent of their assets in Apple, which I think is ludicrous”, said Spellman, who said the company is no longer trading on its fundamentals.

Sandy Villere, who has a 2.5 percent weighting of Apple in his $ 276 million Villere Balanced fund, said that some mutual fund managers are selling shares because of the over-weighting.

“Right now many people who did take huge overweight positions are right-sizing their portfolios to get it in line with their regular weightings,” he said.

Still, some bullish investors see the stock’s recent declines as a buying opportunity.

Mulholland, the Matthew 25 portfolio manager, continues to say that shares should be priced at over $ 1,000 per share based on his valuation of the company at 10 times enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Apple trades at about 7 times that figure now.

Wall Street analysts’ average price target as of Thursday is $ 742.56, according to Thomson Reuters data. But Mulholland is happy to be more bullish than his peers.

“I’m glad that I’m able to get it at these prices,” he said.

(Reporting By David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)

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Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

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Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing

The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.

Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.

Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.

Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.

Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."

That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."

A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.

Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

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Kutcher, Bieber 'swatting' suspect, 12, may not face charges

The 12-year-old suspect arrested in connection to celebrity "swatting" incidents at Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber's homes may not face criminal charges because of his youth and the non-violent nature of the offense, authorities said.

Instead, the case may be handled by the Probation Department, which seeks to divert young offenders into programs that set them on the right path.

The boy has been linked to three swatting incidents -- two involving celebrities and a third involving a bank.
The Los Angeles Police Department, which investigated the case with the Long Beach Police Department and FBI, said they have strong evidence linking the boy to several incidents that prompted a SWAT response, hence the term "swatting."

Police Lt. Marc Reina said the boy used a computer program that allowed him to make TTY calls used by people who are hearing impaired. The boy set up a fake account and began making the calls via message to the LAPD, he said.

He has not yet been charged by prosecutors, who are trying to determine how the matter should be handled.

DIstrict Attorney's spokesman Sandi Gibbons said that the case is being reviewed, but may fall under the control of the Los Angeles County Probation Department because of the boy's age and non-violent nature of the alleged crimes.

Bieber's home was targeted Oct. 10, when Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies received a report claiming a gunman had fired shots and was threatening to harm police when they showed up. The message was received through a TTY device typically used by the deaf to type text over the telephone.

Deputies were unaware it was Bieber's residence and arrived in force. They searched the home and interviewed people on the property, who told them that no call had been made to authorities and that the pop star was away on tour. They determined the incident was a hoax.

A week earlier, Los Angeles police dispatched several units and tactical officers to Kutcher's home on Arrowhead Drive after they received a report through a TTY device from a woman who said she was hiding in a closet because there was a man with a gun inside her residence, according to sources familiar with the case.

But after interviewing workers who were briefly held at gunpoint at the actor's home, as well as contacting Kutcher himself, LAPD investigators determined the incident also was contrived.

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Nokia, RIM settle old disputes in new patent pact

HELSINKI (AP) — Nokia Corp. and Canadian smartphone rival Research In Motion have agreed on a new patent licensing pact which will end all existing litigation between the two struggling companies, the Finnish firm said Friday.

The agreement includes a “one-time payment and on-going payments, all from RIM to Nokia,” Nokia said, but did not disclose “confidential” terms.

Last month, Nokia sued the Blackberry maker for breach of contract in Britain, the United States and Canada over cellular patents they agreed in 2003. RIM claimed the license — which covered patents on “standards-essential” technologies for mobile devices— should also have covered patents for non-essential parts, but the Arbitration Institute of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce ruled against RIM’s claims.

Major manufacturers of phones and wireless equipment are increasingly turning to patent litigation as they jockey for an edge to expand their share of the rapidly growing smartphone market.

Nokia is among leading patent holders in the wireless industry. It has already received a $ 565 million royalty payment from Apple Inc. to settle long-standing patent disputes and filed claims in the United States and Germany alleging that products from HTC Corp. and Viewsonic Corp. infringe a number of its patents.

The company says it has invested €45 billion ($ 60 billion) during the last 20 years in research and development and has one of the wireless industry’s largest IPR portfolios claiming some 10,000 patent families.

Nokia’s share price closed down 3.5 percent at €3.05 on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.

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PSY's 'Gangnam Style' reaches 1B views on YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) — Viral star PSY has reached a new milestone on YouTube.

The South Korean rapper's video for "Gangnam Style" has reached 1 billion views, according to YouTube's own counter. It's the first time any clip has surpassed that mark on the streaming service owned by Google Inc.

It shows the enduring popularity of the self-deprecating video that features Park Jae-sang's giddy up-style dance moves. The video has been available on YouTube since July 15, averaging more than 200 million views per month.

Justin Bieber's video for "Baby" held the previous YouTube record at more than 800 million views.

PSY wasn't just popular on YouTube, either. Earlier this month Google announced "Gangnam Style" was the second highest trending search of 2012 behind Whitney Houston, who passed away in February.

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Too much partying? Young drivers more likely to fall asleep at wheel

Young drivers are the most likely to drive while drowsy, according to a AAA safety study.

One in seven licensed drivers age 16-24 admitted to having nodded off at least once while driving in the past year as compared with one in 10 of all licensed drivers who confessed to falling asleep during the same period, the auto club said.

“Research shows that fatigue impairs safe driving, with many symptoms causing drivers to behave in ways similar to those who are intoxicated,” said Robert Darbelnet, AAA’s chief executive.

The auto club found that while eight out of 10 people view drowsy drivers as a serious threat to their own safety, many admit to driving while extremely drowsy themselves. AAA said 30% of licensed drivers reported having driven in the past 30 days when they were so tired that they struggled to keep their eyes open.

The data mirror a 2010 AAA analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration crash data that estimates that young drivers age 16-24 were more likely, by some 78%, to be drowsy at the time of the crash than drivers age 40-59. This earlier analysis also revealed that one in six deadly crashes involved a drowsy driver, making it one of the leading contributors to traffic crashes.

Some of the common signs of driving drowsy include having trouble remembering the last miles driven or missing exits and traffic signs, difficulty keeping eyes open, yawning frequently or drifting from your lane or off the road.

Automakers are starting to address some of those issues. Several companies are equipping vehicles that chime an alert or vibrate the driver’s seat when a vehicle starts to drift across a lane marker.

Mercedes-Benz has a system that senses driving patterns when someone sits down behind the wheel and looks for deviations that might indicate drowsy driving later in the trip. It sounds a chime and flashes an alert on the dashboard.

ALSO:

Camry, Prius fail crash test

Exploding sunroofs recalled

Lincoln accused of tire trick

Follow me on Twitter (@LATimesJerry), Facebook and Google+.

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New York Stock Exchange operator agrees to be sold for $8.2 billion

A flag flies on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange. (Richard Drew / Associated Press / December 20, 2012)

By Andrew Tangel

December 20, 2012, 6:30 a.m.

NYSE Euronext, operator of the New York Stock Exchange, has agreed to sell itself to the IntercontinentalExchange in an acquisition that would reshape Wall Street.

ICE, a 12-year-old electronic exchange operator based in Atlanta, will pay $33.12 a share for NYSE Euronext in a stock-and-cash deal worth $8.2 billion.

The companies announced the acquisition early Thursday, saying both of their boards or directors unanimously approved the deal. The acquisition is slated to close in the second half of 2013, pending the blessing of U.S. and European regulators and both companies' shareholders.

Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?

"This transaction leverages the strength of our iconic brand and the value we have created in our global equity and derivatives franchises -- positioning the business for solid long-term growth and development," Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of NYSE Euronext, said in a statement.

Although the New York Stock Exchange is the most public window into Wall Street, the Big Board's share of equities trading has declined sharply in recent years, as NYSE Euronext has expanded its trading venues in an increasingly electronic and fragmented marketplace.

Founded in 2000, ICE has grown into a leading venue for commodities and energy futures exchanges and derivatives clearinghouses.

NYSE Euronext's stock closed at $24.05 a share, with a market cap of $5.84 billion. The NYSE's stock was surging $10 a share, or 42%, in pre-market trading.

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Shaquille O'Neal to launch "Luv Shaq" vodka

FTC expands kids online privacy rules [Video chat]

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Heart joins select class with Rock Hall induction

NEW YORK (AP) — The journey to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame can be a long and winding road for some acts. For Heart, it took more than a decade, and sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson admitted they were losing hope.

"(The) running joke in the band was (we) would never get in," Ann said.

But all that changed when the group made the class of 2013, announced this month.

"Well, it just goes to show you that just when you think you know the shape of rock 'n' roll, it changes shape on you," Ann said. "This is really more than thrilling."

Her younger sister, Nancy, was glad the speculation over whether they'd make it was finally put to rest.

"We feel like we deserve it, so we're happy to be here," Nancy said.

Since their seminal 1976 release "Dreamboat Annie" that spawned the classic hits "Magic Man," and "Crazy on You," the band went on the sell more than 30 million albums worldwide. They took time off in the 1990s so Nancy, then married to director Cameron Crowe, could raise her family, but have been performing and touring for the last several years. This year, they released their 14th studio album, "Heart Fanatic," and also released the book "Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock & Roll." Their most recent tour resumes on Jan. 25 in Worcester, Mass.

With their induction, they are part of only a few rock bands in the hall fronted by women (others include Jefferson Airplane with lead singer Grace Slick. Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie with Fleetwood Mac, and Chrissie Hynde with the Pretenders).

Neither sister feels she was an inspiration to other women that eventually played in rock 'n' roll bands.

"Boys invented rock to get girls, so when girls came into it they had to make a new universe," Ann joked, before adding: "I'm just looking forward to the time when we don't have to have a gender designation on music. To me, that will really be the time when we've done something."

The 28th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction ceremony will be held in Los Angeles on April 18. Other acts who will be part of the 2013 class are Rush, Donna Summer, Randy Newman, Public Enemy and Albert King.

They're proud to be among the more senior rock acts still touring today (Ann is 62; Nancy is 58).

"Rock 'n' roll does not have an age limit as long as it's authentic. Rock and roll is just as beautiful as when Keith Richards plays it as jazz would be when Thelonious Monk would play it," said Ann. "But the key to all that is that it has to be the real deal. It can't be some old washed up dudes thinking ... 'Let's go out and do it some more.' No. It has to still be vital."

____

Online:

www.heart-music.com

www.rockhall.com

____

Derrik J. Lang contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

__

John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at —http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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U.N. Suspends Polio Campaign in Pakistan After Killings of Workers

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

A Pakistani woman administered polio vaccine to an infant on Wednesday in the slums of Islamabad. Militants have killed nine polio workers this week.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis.

The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.

At the ground level, it is those female health workers who are essential, allowed privileged entrance into private homes to meet and help children in situations denied to men because of conservative rural culture. “They are on the front line; they are the backbone,” said Imtiaz Ali Shah, a polio coordinator in Peshawar.

The killings started in the port city of Karachi on Monday, the first day of a vaccination drive aimed at the worst affected areas, with the shooting of a male health worker. On Tuesday four female polio workers were killed, all gunned down by men on motorcycles in what appeared to be closely coordinated attacks.

The hit jobs then moved to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which, along with the adjoining tribal belt, constitutes Pakistan’s main reservoir of new polio infections. The first victim there was one of two sisters who had volunteered as polio vaccinators. Men on motorcycles shadowed them as they walked from house to house. Once the sisters entered a quiet street, the gunmen opened fire. One of the sisters, Farzana, died instantly; the other was uninjured.

On Wednesday, a man working on the polio campaign was shot dead as he made a chalk mark on the door of a house in a suburb of Peshawar. Later, a female health supervisor in Charsadda, 15 miles to the north, was shot dead in a car she shared with her cousin.

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here make for easy targets. They wear no uniform but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”

On a global scale, setbacks are not unusual in polio vaccination campaigns, which, by dint of their massive scale and need to reach deep inside conservative societies, end up grappling with more than just medical challenges. In other campaigns in Africa and South Asia, vaccinators have grappled with natural disaster, virulent opposition from conservative clerics and sudden outbreaks of mysterious strains of the disease.

Declan Walsh reported from Lahore, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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