I don't know that Elop is a turncoat. I'm not sure that evil genius beats blundering fool. I do know that he burned through all of Nokia's cash, lost 9 out of 10 handset customers, and got thousands of people unemployed. And in the end got a golden parachute for it. Either way, Microsoft can't seriously consider him for a future CEO role. Give the company a little more credit than that.
The reason Microsoft is giving him a golden parachute is proof that bringing Nokia to its knees and selling it for cheap to Microsoft was the main agenda from the start.
To any reasonable person's eyes, he was a complete maniac whose decisions brought the fastest decline of any major corporation in the history of mankind.
But to Microsoft's eyes, he's the trojan who successfully bombed the world's most powerful company in the mobile world (IP-wise, at least) in order to devalue it for a bargain bin purchase in the end.
It doesn't matter if he successfully corrupted the whole BoD and key investors with millions of dollars to off-shore accounts or just managed to use his pretty smile, but he did it.
He's a friggin' genius. In fact, the guy's so good that even after all this there are still people in this generally well-informed forum who back his actions as being for Nokia's best interests.
After completely destroying the company, people still back him up! How crazy is that?
That said, of course he's a candidate for Microsoft's CEO.
He emanates a powerful reality destortion field, he plays nice in front of the cameras, he has destroyed other companies to Microsoft's advantage, he's cold-hearted enough to make tens of thousands of people jobless to Microsoft's advantage and he probably feels absolutely no regret for it.
He's the perfect candidate for Microsoft's CEO.
Apple doubled in value one year and then went back down to where it came from the next and now back up to somewhere in the middle, even though nothing really changed along the way. Or even better, it told us Apple was worth $200 one day, $120 a few weeks later, $190 another few months later, and then $82, right before it's unstoppable climb to said $700. During this whole time, Apples fundamentals only went up up up.
(...)
If you can manage explain me what the market told me in the cases above, far bigger than 35% and 8%, maybe I can convince myself to read past this last sentence of yours.
What I find weird is that you're comparing a market reaction that happened within instants after an official statement to a change that happened during months.
The 35% and 8% changes were a reaction to the deal and nothing else.
Apple's stock fluctuations that happen during months and years didn't happen because of a single deal or announcement. They happened because of thousands of news/rumours about stuff that happened with the competition, news/rumours about deals with suppliers, news/rumours about court decisions on IP struggles, news/rumours on purchasing companies, reactions to keynotes, whims of some big stockholders that influence the decisions of the smaller ones, etc.
Was there a single event that prompted an 8+% change in apple's stock price within instants during the last 3 years? I'd be surprised if you find one.
(That's a $40 delta for the current $500 share price btw.)