One number instantly explains why Apple's investors are having a wildly different year than Oracle's

It's astonishing however the escaped currency travel enactment has meant wildly antithetic things for Apple (AAPL) and Oracle (ORCL) investors this year. 

Call it an Investing 101 reminder: Cash is king. 

Quick insight: With tech investors laser-focused connected capex, escaped currency travel has emerged arsenic a large operator of stock prices this year. 

The latest example: Alphabet (GOOGL) reported its archetypal antagonistic escaped currency travel quarter, and the banal was hammered past week aft its earnings. Free currency travel could stay antagonistic for Alphabet successful the near-term, based connected guidance from its net call.  

As for Apple, it has generated astir $129 cardinal successful trailing 12-month escaped currency flow. On the different hand, Oracle has seen a $24 cardinal outflow. It's not that Apple isn't investing successful AI, but Oracle's concern exemplary requires it to instrumentality bigger fiscal swings. In this case, those swings are being funded by caller debt.

Zoom in: Oracle shares are present down 52% since June 2, according to Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace data. This brings the year-to-date descent successful Oracle's banal terms to 40% versus a 8% summation for the S&P 500 (^GSPC).

AlphaSpace information shows Oracle's banal is trading astatine its lowest guardant price-to-earnings ratio successful much than 4 years astatine 14.2 times. The existent guardant P/E ratio for the S&P 500 is astir 20 times.

The communicative astatine Apple is the opposite. 

Apple's awesome tally this twelvemonth connected the banal charts has pushed up its guardant P/E to 35 times, contempt the institution waving goodbye to longtime CEO Tim Cook and mostly staying retired of the AI discussion.

Shares person gained a coagulated 23% this year.

Bottom line: Don't expect the fortunes of these 2 tech behemoths to alteration anytime soon. Apple is expected to stay escaped currency travel affirmative for the foreseeable future, whereas Oracle is showing nary denotation it's consenting to chopped backmost connected capex to appease uneasy shareholders.