Apple Computer

For now, allow for minimum downside to the 165.41 midpoint 'hidden' support of this pattern. Because of the mild gnarliness of this picture and the deep-sea location of p, you can try bottom-fishing there with a very tight stop-loss, even using out-of-the-money call options to leverage the bounce. Be sure to cash out half if they double in price!  The chart shown in the inset yields a different and more troubling picture. The stochastic divergence shown is quite bearish, even if it is not yet ominous. I will continue to monitor it, since AAPL remains The Only Stock That Matters. ______ UPDATE (Feb 14, 2022): AAPL's unwillingness to fall is what kept the stock market from continuing Friday's refreshing slide. The Hidden Pivot at 165.41 could still get schmeissed, but that didn't seem likely at the bell. _______ UPDATE (Feb 15, 11:04 p.m.): Even if the pattern shown in this chart doesn't develop into a textbook head-and-shoulders, the look of it at the moment is bullish. To give bears the benefit of the doubt, however, we should hold the applause until such time as buyers push above the key peak at 177.18 recorded on January 12. _______ UPDATE (Feb 17, 6:07 p.m.): Weakness over the last several days has started to bend the head-and-shoulders pattern out of symmetry, somewhat diminishing its bullishness..

AAPL began the week with an impressive rally but couldn't summon enough additional thrust to surpass a key 'external' peak at 177.18 recorded on January 12. This doesn't necessarily mean the stock won't eventually push above the peak and the all-time high at 182.94 notched a week earlier. However, it does suggest that the move will be lacking in power and the new high potentially fleeting. That's as much speculating as we can do at the moment, so let's sit back for a few days and let price action speak for itself. ______ UPDATE (Feb 9, 7:55 p.m.): Bulls have consolidated late January's steep rally and are now ready to take on the record high at 182.94 recorded on January 4.  The pattern shown in this chart is a bullish reverse head-and-shoulders formation, but even if you were oblivious to it, the visual impression it gives is unmistakably positive.

AAPL stalled almost to-the-penny at 170.18, the D target of the reverse pattern shown. We might have attempted to get short there if this had occurred in the middle of the day. However, it was not such an appealing play ahead of the weekend, especially with the stock closing on the high tick of the session. The rally to the target in retrospect was all but ordained, given the gap-up opening bar through the midpoint Hidden Pivot at 162.20. The spike also exceeded an external peak from a week ago, generating the kind of impulse leg that almost invariably portends a continuation of the trend. Elsewhere on the page, I've featured a chart that shows the stock rallying to the neckline of a bearish head-and-shoulders pattern. Which picture will prevail? The questions seems likely to be settled this week, since just sitting there is not an option. _______ UPDATE (Jan 31, 8:12 p.m. EST): DaBoyz showed the trading world's hard-core doubters of the bull's invincibility how it's done, effortlessly wafting a $3 trillion stock more than 2% higher on a volume-less Monday morning opening. Just a few more points and their perennially resurgent Phoenix will have the magnetic help of the old record-high at 182 to add imagination's pull to short-covering's push. ______ UPDATE (Feb 2, 8:47 p.m.): DaBoyz are about to let AAPL fall, since the carnage in Facebook and Paypal has made it unnecessary and uneconomical to support King Kong when lower 'reload' prices are guaranteed. 

The head-and-shoulders pattern that AAPL has traced out since Thanksgiving is so commanding at this point that there's no point in using Hidden Pivot patterns to try to improve the forecast. The selloff will need to hit 158 or so to round out the pattern visually, with additional room all the way down to around 147 if bears mean business.  We shouldn't rule out the distant-longshot bet entirely, however. That would call for a sharp reversal from 160 or above that just keeps going. A rally with sticking power would be telegraphed by minor rallies that shred their d targets. Whatever happens, AAPL continues to be the perfect proxy for institutional mindset, ambition, folly and greed. _______ UPDATE (Jan 24, 8:23 p.m.): Today's exhilarating plunge to 154.70 made the head-and-shoulders pattern look even more compelling. It amounts to mountainous supply, so we'll focus on ways to get short, or perhaps long in order to make a few bucks ahead of the next downturn. Stay tuned to the chat room for a timelier perspective.

Like so many other stocks we follow, AAPL appears to be topping, setting up a plunge that is more than a year overdue.  Because the shares are valued at $3 trillion, and because owning them has been the no-brainer path to success for virtually every money manager on earth, the inevitable takedown is likely to consume years and feature many spectacular bear rallies. That would not be conducive to the kind of butterfly spreading we usually do to leverage big bear moves. However, we're certain to find a way nonetheless, presumably by selling juice at the top of run-ups and by buying distant calls at swing lows. For now, sit back and enjoy the spectacle of portfolio giants getting trapped because there is no one to take them out of the mountainous quantities of AAPL they've been accumulating and hoarding since 2009. ______ UPDATE (Jan 19, 10:30): Bottom-fish the 164.87 target shown in this chart if you know how to cut the entry risk to $0.15 per share.  Using the marquee high at 182.94 would produce a lower target at 162.41, but I just don't have it in me to bend the rules that much, since we would be using a too obvious ABCD pattern without a valid impulse leg.  _______ UPDATE (Jan 20, 7:40): I've put the 'bastard' target at 162.41 in boldface green, not that I enjoy having my arm bent by reality.  

I'll be interested to see how well our longstanding bull market target at 187.93 works. On the one-hand, I've drum-rolled it loud enough and for long enough to compromise its usefulness. On the other, the particular pattern is the most reliable of the ones I employ for trading and forecasting, with a relative quick ABC, followed by a very elongated C-D leg that causes Gartley and other 1-2-3 pattern traders to lose sight of the 'D' target. There is also the punitive correction that began a zillionth of an inch from the midpoint pivot. That is usually predictive of an equally precise pullback from the D' target, which became an odds-on bet to be reached when the stock blasted free of the midpoint pivot's gravity in November. The least likely scenario I can envision is a bear market starting without D having been reached. We'll be on our guard for this nonetheless, watching for minor corrective abc patterns to start exceeding their 'd' targets, and for minor abc rallies to start failing at 'p'. _______ UPDATE (Jan 10, 5:20 p.m.): Bears gave it their all but failed to drive AAPL down to p2=167.36, even, let alone to D=167.37.  The short-squeeze that ended the session would trip a 'mechanical' short at  x=172.66, stop 175.31, but I'm going to suggest sitting this one out, since the squeeze is unlikely to abate overnight. _______ UPDATE (Jan 12, 5:10): Bulls will face heavy supply between 177 and 181, and I'll be as interested as you to see how they handle it. If poorly, the expected push to 187.93 may take significantly longer than I'd originally imagined, assuming it happens at all. _______ UPDATE (Jan 13, 6:52 p.m.): I'm no fan of head-and-shoulders patterns because they are everywhere you seek them, but this one is

AAPL still looks like a no-brainer -- not only to achieve the 187.93 bull market target shown, but to provide a tradeable pullback from it that we can short profitably. It is comforting to have such a predictable bellwether. It is better than that, actually, since the stock provides an unobstructed view into the chimp brains of those who get paid to throw huge quantities of Other People's money at a relative handful of ridiculously overvalued stocks. Get AAPL right, as I have always said, and you get stock the market right. ______ UPDATE (Jan 5, 8:43 p.m.)' The stock has turned down sharply after getting within 2.6% of the 187.93 target. This is interesting, since the E- Mini Dow came even closer to a 36,890 target I was eager to short before it, too, took a steep dive. The yellow flag is out.

AAPL's megabucks sponsors had a bumpy ride last week, although you couldn't tell it from the weekly chart. It shows the stock in a placid, self-assured ascent toward the 187.93 bull-market target flagged here last week. As the week wore on, the stock was deftly used by DaBoyz in tag-team fashion to power the broad averages higher. When AAPL was getting hit, most stocks were on the rise, and vice versa. This is a very efficient way to keep the bull-market con alive, given that Apple's nearly $3 trillion capitalization can counterbalance money flows from a score of lesser, albeit highly visible, stocks.  From a technical standpoint, we should regard a pullback to p=145.52 (stop 131.38) as an excellent 'mechanical' buying opportunity, although so fetching a bargain seems unlikely. There's a lesser rally target at 172.40 that should produce a discernible pause or pullback. We won't take it too seriously, though because the weekly-chart pattern that produced it is too obvious: A=123.13 on 6/4.

The institutional apes are in this stock up to their eyeballs -- with YOUR hard-earned savings! -- so don't expect it to go quietly into the night. In fact, AAPL would become a fetching 'mechanical' buy on a pullback to p=155.34, stop 149.65, and even moreso at x=146.80. That's no guarantee it will hit D=172.40 the next time its handlers goose it knowingly, but it does imply that if a bear market has commenced, it's not likely to provide an easy path to riches for permabears. That's not about to happen as long as AAPL, the most institutionally over-owned stock ever, has the worshipful support of Big Money. ________ UPDATE (Nov 29, 6:45 p.m. ET): Friday's low got within 46  cents of the red line, close enough to set up the 'fetching' mechanical trade I'd suggested above. I won't track it,  however, unless I hear from at least two subscribers who got aboard. Don't wait for me if you're in, though, since the so-far $500 gain per round lot warrants partial profit-taking. _______ UPDATE (Nov 30,6:02 p.m.): On Wall Street, nothing succeeds like excess, and it was force-fed into AAPL today with the efficiency of a hydraulic piston.  To underscore the point that they are completely in charge even when the broad averages are plummeting, DaBoyz levitated the world's biggest-cap stock by more than 3%, closing it on the high of the day.  Shorts left bruised and bleeding supplied yet more buoyancy after the close, pushing the stock still higher into effectively zero supply. It's a quite clever trick, preventing a bear market from happening merely by targeting a single stock. That's how the game is played, and although it will ultimately prove to be a losing strategy, we shouldn't underestimate how long the Street's criminal masterminds can sustain the