Will Apple (AAPL) stock go to $700?

It’s a question that many will be exploring today now that AAPL stock has topped $600 once again. But to me, it’s the kind of question that’s easy to answer with a simple “yes.”

I say that because it’s the same kind of question basketball fans asked a few years ago about the likes of Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and whether these great players could lead their respective teams to an NBA championship.

You see, when you’re the best at what you do, you are going to achieve greatness. That’s why both Jordan and James now each have multiple rings. And that’s why AAPL stock is going to $700 (or at least its split-adjusted equivalent).

Of course, nobody knew precisely when MJ or King James was going to finally win it all, but we all had a pretty strong suspicion it was going to happen.

Same thing goes with AAPL stock right now: We don’t know when the next really big move higher is going to be.

However, now that the shares are trading just under $600, Apple shares only have to get bid up about 17% for it to eclipse that ethereal $700 mark.

Click to Enlarge The latest move higher for the Cupertino consumer-tech powerhouse came largely as a result of the company’s strong fiscal Q2 earnings report. Apple beat on just about every metric you can imagine, including revenue, EPS, gross margin, number of iPhones sold and number of Macs sold. The company had a slight wobble with iPad sales, but that was about the only blemish on an otherwise stellar quarter.

Perhaps more importantly, AAPL stock spiked from a combination of a bigger stock buyback announcement, an increased dividend payment and the really big announcement, a huge 7-for-1 stock split. The split announcement was one of those news items that the world latched on to, and that helped traders jump back into AAPL with a vengeance. Shares vaulted about 14% in the five trading sessions following the announcement, sending AAPL stock almost to the $600 level. (And Apple shares surpassed that level Tuesday.)

The stock split was undoubtedly designed to put AAPL stock in position to become a Dow Jones Industrial Average component, and I think that’s now a certainty the next time the Dow Jones is reconfigured.

I also think that the split, the buyback and the strong quarterly metrics are enough to push the stock to the equivalent of $700.

More ammunition bolstering my $700 thesis includes the highly anticipated release of the iPhone 6, which is getting a lot of buzz from various sources in Silicon Valley. There’s also the rest of Apple’s pipeline, which includes an iWatch that increasingly seems like it will be health-based in nature.

Then there’s the general change in sentiment among investors now that AAPL shares have proven they can come off the canvas after a drop below the $400 level last June.

Yet maybe the most important thing to note here is that Apple Inc. and AAPL stock are like Michael Jordan or LeBron James.

Apple has long been the best at what it does — i.e., providing unequalled consumer electronic products — and until that changes, the stock is going to keep “winning championships.”

In the case of AAPL stock, that means a trip to the equivalent of a split-adjusted $700.

As of this writing, Jim Woods did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.