AAPL’s latest wilding spree has died somewhat shy of a 232.30 rally target touted here earlier that should have been a piece of cake. I hesitate to infer this signals an end to the bull market, but it certainly deserves watching, since AAPL is not a stock accustomed to trend failures. If we were to look for a possible reason why, we need search no further than this headline atop a recent Wall Street Journal break page:  Apple’s Phones Get Bigger, Pricier. That achievement, if you could call it that, is going to be crucial to the company’s fortunes, given that smartphone sales account for two thirds of Apple’s revenues.

Steve Jobs Rolling in His Grave

To say the Cupertino behemoth has lost its edge would be a charitable understatement; uber-innovator Steve Jobs is probably rolling in his grave. The latest iPhones are 15% pricier than last year’s, averaging $949. The screens are bigger than ever — not so much to entertain users as to make certain they see advertisers’ messages, but good. In this way, cell phones have come to usurp the role of television, a medium conceived not simply to entertain and amuse viewers, but to aggregate their eyeballs and serve up those eyeballs to advertisers in categories, or “demographics,” that suit sellers’ needs. Smartphones can do this far better than TV ever did, tailoring ads not just to broad categories of consumers, but to individuals. How well does this business model work? Your editor is probably the wrong person to ask. I have a low-end, small-screen Android phone that can do nearly everything iPhone can do, and perform some tasks even better. I can’t see why tens of millions of users would cough up nearly a thousand bucks for a new cell phone — especially since most of them already own one that costs $700 or more on average. But I’ve been wrong about this so far. Regardless, there is no doubting that if the economy ever falls into recession, it will hit Apple, the world’s most valuable company, much harder than it will other retailers. _______ UPDATE (Sep 19, 8:42 p.m. EDT): Apple has taken a modest bounce from the 215.85 Hidden Pivot support shown, but the rally will need to surpass a couple of prior peaks on the hourly chart before we can infer it’s bound for the still-valid target at 232.30 noted above. The first of them lies at 221.85, so that’s where we should set a screen alert to warn that buying power is waxing.______UPDATE (Sep 20, 9:53 p.m.): Helped by short-covering, buyers fist-pumped their way above an ‘external’ peak at 221.85 on the opening bar, re-energizing the uptrend. This will all but clinch a follow-through to the 232.30 rally target we’ve been using if buyers can surpass a second ‘external’ peak at 224.31 recorded a week ago.