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Message| (467)    The title of this article may seem to be a
statement of the obvious. Cash and cash equivalents are
accounted for as assets on a company's balance sheet. Yet a
surprising number of investors appear to view Apple's (AAPL)
massive cash hoard as a negative for the stock. Recently, hedge
fund manager Leon Cooperman of Omega Advisors jumped on this
bandwagon. He told CNBC that several other stocks, such as
Qualcomm (QCOM) and Google (GOOG) were now preferable to Apple,
because of Apple's "financial policy". Cooperman's preference
for Qualcomm over Apple seems particularly odd, as Qualcomm
faces as much competitive pressure as Apple, or more, but trades
at a higher valuation by most metrics. Like Apple, Qualcomm
currently enjoys a dominant position in high-end smartphones,
but is under threat from competitors: for Qualcomm, these
include Intel (INTC), Nvidia (NVDA), and Samsung (OTC:SSNLF).
Qualcomm's competitors are well-financed, an