Scrooge McDuck’s Money Vault. Image: The Walt Disney Company
FORTUNE — When you write about Apple’s (AAPL) finances for a living, your fingers can get tired of typing — and your readers can get tired of reading — “cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities” every time you want to refer to the company’s hoard of liquid assets.
I try to be precise, but from time to time I spare my fingers — and my readers — and rely on the same shorthand used by everyone from CEO Tim Cook to hedge fund billionaire (and Apple litigant) David Einhorn, and I just write “cash.”
But a sociologist turned occasional investor and Seeking Alpha contributor named Jarrod Jacinth has taken offense. On Monday he posted a story guaranteed to get the attention of Apple partisans and headline-reading hedge-fund algorithms:
Apple Does Not Have $137 Billion In Cash
I don’t believe Jacinth’s little exercise in financial pedantry — or his risible contention that this is a reason Einhorn dropped his suit against Apple — justifies the calumny heaped on him in the comment stream.
But I did get a kick out of the question someone posted on Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board:
“Does anyone really think that Apple has a Scrooge McDuck Money Vault somewhere in which Tim Cook can swim in $137 billion in cash?”
Below: Where Apple parks its “cash,” courtesy of Asymco‘s Horace Dediu.
Source: Horace Dediu. Click to enlarge.
