Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives raised his price target for Apple (AAPL) to $215 from $200 ahead of the expected announcement of its "long awaited" streaming video service that will compete with the likes of Netflix (NFLX), Disney (DIS), Hulu, among others. The analyst views this as a pivotal step in further driving Apple's services flywheel, and believes it will only be the drumroll to a more transformative content acquisition during the course of 2019 for Apple. The services business remains the "wild card" in driving the valuation higher for Apple as he estimates the valuation of the services franchise for the company is worth roughly $400B on a standalone basis with this highly profitable segment poised to exceed $50B in revenues by 2020. Ives reiterates an Outperform rating on Apple's shares.

Welcome to "Fly Insider," The Fly's weekly recap of notable insider stock transactionsNOTABLE INSIDER PURCHASES: Significant insider purchases reported in the prior week from April 15 through April 19 include:Chairman of Ashford (AINC) Montgomery Bennett purchased 200,000 shares of company stock at $4. 91 per share... To see the rest of the story go to thefly.com. See Story Here

Apple quietly acquired Paris-based AI startup Datakalab on December 17, Challenges' David Pargamin reports. The terms of the transaction could not be learned, but European Commission has been notified of the deal, the author notes. Reference Link

Friday's total option volume of 56.7 million contracts resulted in net open interest growth of 6.01 million calls and 5.28 million puts. NVIDIA (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), Apple (AAPL) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) saw the greatest growth. Top five new positions opened include 50k Lyft (LYFT) May-24 20 calls, 44k Energy Transfer (ET) 4/26 weekly 16.5 calls, 43k Las Vegas Sands (LVS) Sep-24 41 calls, 23k Tesla (TSLA) 4/26 weekly 162.5 calls and 21k Papa John's (PZZA) Jun-24 57.5 puts.