Fourth quarter Apple revenues to exceed $2 billion.

Here we go again. Who said that Apple would ever die? Even the little glitch in the recent stock options was not enough to bring the Mac company down.

I think it is a good time to write some call options on your Apple stocks. Note that you trade options only on contracts (1 contract = 100 shares).

The AAPL stock closed at $75.02 on Friday (13 October). It is expected to go higher. Say your taget selling price price is $80 per share. You will be getting your call options interest upfront plus your magin if/when the stock hits $80 and you sell it. Call options contracts expire the third Friday of each month. If you do this now you will only have a 5-day contract; which means that if by this coming Friday, the stock goes to $80 you’ll be getting the call fee(interest) at the time you write that option, and the stock sale margin of $5 per share. If the stock does not reach $80, you still get your call fee from the person who bought the call option from you and you will keep your stock. I call this strategy “renting your stocks”. You win both ways. How do you like that?

Merrill Lynch’s Richard Farmer is the latest Wall Street analyst to tweak his expectations for Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter to reflect lower iPod digital music player sales and slightly higher Mac sales.

In a research note released Friday, Farmer increased his revenue estimate for the company’s fourth quarter from $4.57 to $4.66 billion and his earnings-per-share (EPS) estimate from $0.48 to $0.51.

“The changes are emblematic of what a broader thematic shift in the story away from iPods toward an emphasis on Macs and 2007 new product cycles,” he told clients.

After reviewing some preliminary NPD data through the month of September, the analyst lowered his iPod unit sales estimate from 8.3 million units (up 28 percent yearly) to 7.7 million (up 20 percent yearly). However, he raised his estimate for average selling prices (ASPs) of the players for the quarter to be $184, from $177, to “better reflect unit mix from NPD.”

“Due to new pricing from Apple heading into the holiday season we now expect ASPs to decline by 6 percent sequentially [during the first fiscal quarter of 2007],” Farmer said.

Offsetting slower iPod sales, according to the analyst, are slightly higher Mac sales due to “better than expected demand for new Mac Books.” He now expects the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to report sales of 1.51 million systems (up 22 percent yearly) during its fourth fiscal quarter compared to his previous estimate of 1.44 million estimate (up 16 percent yearly).

Farmer, who maintains a “Buy” rating on shares of Apple, expects the company’s Mac revenues to account for $2.025 billion for the quarter.

by Prince McLean

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