AAPL’s canny handlers squandered an opportunity to reach $130 or higher on today’s earnings news. Instead, they could muster only an obligatory, $4 short-squeeze pop to $122 before crashing back down to Earth (and then some). This holds bearish implications for the stock market as a whole, since the failure of so important a bellwether to take advantage of earnings nuttiness will deprive Wall Street of one of its most reliable smoke-and-mirrors tactics for sustaining a bull market that long ago outlived its credibility. At the moment, the stock is trading around $115, down more than $3 from the pre-announcement price. Samsung’s massive failure with its most recent release will provide a boost to iPhone sales in the weeks ahead, but not enough to overcome the growing drag of perceptions that Apple without Jobs has ceased to innovate. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google will take up some of the slack, but whether just four stocks-on-steroids can hold the coming bear market at bay is questionable. _______ UPDATE (Oct 26, 7:15 p.m. ET): Strictly speaking, using after-hours price bars, AAPL became a ‘mechanical’ buy on the pullback to the green line (see inset, a new chart). I’m not a believer, but it’s not my ‘beliefs’ that you or I should rely on, but rather the cold, hard facts such as we might find on a bar chart. In this case, I will recommend no trade at the moment; I’ll just watch — and be mildly awed if the dirtballs who manipulate AAPL so brazenly for a living actually succeed in pushing it to the 125.39 target. ______ UPDATE (Oct 27, 9:05 p.m.): I read the shakedown in AMZN as telegraphing a bullish resolution for AAPL, although it implies a lengthy consolidation for both stocks that could stretch well into the holiday period. Whether C=111.01 holds is an open question, but if p=118.20 is exceeded first, that would lock in 125.39.
