With the exception of AAPL, which has been getting lousy press lately, the FAANG stocks were positioned to hit ‘Hidden Pivot’ rally targets last week; only NFLX succeeded. This will have mildly bearish implications as the week begins, since the short squeeze that energized NFLX was very much a Friday kinda thing. Factor in rising oil prices and a strong dollar, and DaBoyz will have their work cut out for them if they want to take the broad averages higher. This is notwithstanding the fact that there are only a relative handful of stocks that need to be goosed to sustain the illusion of a bull market. Concerning Apple, the unthinkable seems to have occurred. There were actual concerns that using high-end screens for their latest iPhone would price it beyond the reach of too many customers. This is definitely a man-bites-dog story, since at no time in the past has Apple’s cult of buyers balked at paying steep prices for relatively small gains in technology. AAPL’s daily chart appears to be rolling down (see inset), but we won’t count out bulls quite yet, since the shares are a must-own for the investment world’s leviathans. They don’t change their game plan often, and so any weakness in AAPL should be viewed as a manipulation by the in-crowd to bring the price down to relative bargain levels.