Apple Computer

AAPL went all spastic on Wednesday, apparently because the quasi-criminal monopoly of its app store is drawing intense scrutiny from eurolands's notoriously zealous regulators. They've proven time and again that they can be bought off, but there is understandable concern that any bribe paid these extortionists will be in painful proportion to AAPL's $2 trillion-plus valuation. The wack-jobs powering Apple shares higher, famously including the central bank of Switzerland, will shrug it off in a day or two if not sooner so that AAPL can return in earnest to the urgent mission chosen for it by the U.S. Government: making all the pension funds that hold the stock appear solvent for as long as possible. From a technical standpoint, it is mildly bullish that the top of Wednesday's schizoid spike slightly exceeded a very clear Hidden Pivot target at 135.96. Let's see how long the correction lasts before we bull up with gusto for the next stab higher.

AAPL still looks like a lead-pipe cinch to achieve the 537.50 rally target shown in the chart. Whether it takes a few days or a couple of weeks, the broad averages will be moving higher simultaneously, because that's how the game works. The stock will open Monday trading for around $125, since it is splitting four-for-one. The reason for the adjustment is that some big shareholders want out, and the only way they can accomplish this is by lowering the price to attract millions of new greater fools.  The Robinhood crowd, for one, but also every small investor who has dreamed of owning a few shares of the institutional world's most cherished stock. At $125 per share, it's not cheap. But the price is low enough that even a millennial living in his parents' basement can probably scrape together enough cash to purchase a round lot. There are surely enough odd-lotters to take hundreds of a billions of dollars worth of stock off the hands of pros who recognize how absurdly overvalued AAPL is. We get a sense of just how many small-timers are out there to bail them out whenever a PowerBall jackpot hits nine figures. Imagine how large the lotto jackpots would be if, instead of buying $5-$10 worth of lottery tickets, the rubes spent $3,000-$5,000 as they absolutely will on Apple shares. Do the math, That's what portfolio managers are counting on, since they know AAPL offers extremely poor value at these levels. For trading purposes, you should stay close to the chat room if you're keen to play. The stock would trigger a 'mechanical' buy if it fell to 488.97.  However, the implied stop-loss at 470.12 would risk nearly $1,700 per round lot -- far more than our usual gambit. But it will always be possible

AAPL shredded its way past two imposing Hidden Pivots with such ease on Friday that there can be little doubt it will reach the 537.23 target shown in the chart. This seems likely to occur before the stock splits 4-to-1 next Monday, yielding a 134.30 price at the target. The split is meaningless technically, but it has a reason that holds very significant implications for Apple shareholders. The sole purpose of the split is to broaden the ownership base so that the fat cats who have owned the stock since it was trading for under $100 can quietly distribute it to a million greater fools who implicitly believe the company is worth $2 trillion. At $134 a share, acrophobia will no longer be a factor, nor will the sense of foreboding that investors sometimes get when a stock has run up as spectacularly as AAPL has. The pattern shown is all but guaranteed to work for 'mechanical' entries, assuming there is a pullback sufficient to get us aboard. I doubt this will occur, at least on the hourly chart, but all trades should be initiated with a bullish bias that assumes nothing can prevent the stock from reaching 537.23.  I've implied this could take a week, but at the rate things are going, the  target could be hit as early as Monday. If so, we should see a pop above the pink line (p2=512.03) Sunday night. This is shades of 'Radio,' circa 1929  and it is not going to end well. It will take a while, however -- many months, perhaps -- for DaBoyz to distribute perhaps $1 trillion of stock to the rubes before reality sets in. The fact that much of the distribution will occur at levels equivalent to a ridiculous 537.23 is a tribute to the evil

AAPL still has a rally target outstanding at 490.97, a 6% move from  here. If the stock achieves it, the stock market, particularly the tech stocks, are certain to move higher in sympathy. How likely is this? Very, I'd say, given the ease with which buyers gapped through Hidden Pivot levels represented by, respectively, a green line and a red one. Even so, the stock has looked heavy for the last few days and may need to pull back to get some running room. The first hint that a more significant decline is under way would be signaled by an unpaused drop below 452.18, a number that is equal to a technically important low recorded last Friday before the stock's most recent advance. Minor trouble would come on a print at 460.59. ______ UPDATE (Aug 20, 5:12 p.m. ET): AAPL remains the only stock we need get right in order to predict the stock market's important swings correctly. At the moment, it is keeping us from getting distracted by a bearish drumbeat based in part on a Bradley turn date yesterday. Because of this stock's crucial importance, I am focusing on lesser ABC patterns in order to get a very precise read on the stock as it makes its way toward a potentially important top just above, at 490.97.  Subscribers who shorted p2=472.99 in this chart could cover right now for a $124 profit on four round lots, but as I noted in a chat room post at 3:24 pm., the trade was not intended as an overnight hold.  You can short at D=479.92, but this is also  being recommended as a day  trade, very tightly stopped.

I'll be tracking AAPL more closely than ever in the days ahead, since it is closing on a Hidden Pivot rally target with the potential to create a major top. If one occurs, the stock market will be topping as well, since Apple shares, valued at nearly $2 trillion, are the most important market bellwether of them all globally. The target lies at 490.97, and it is all but certain to be achieved, given the gap-up moves through x and p (see inset). I cannot guarantee that this will be THE top, since the pattern's point 'A' low is not very compelling. But there is just one logical alternative at 519.50 that would remain if 490.97 is easily exceeded. It comes from sliding 'A' down to the 236.90 low recorded on April 2. However, the pattern shown is sufficiently clear that a tradeable pullback from 490.97 is extremely likely. This scenario will make an excellent bet, presumably using put options priced below $1 that expire in about 8-12 days. _______ UPDATE (Aug 17, 7:15 p.m. ET) Buyers have turned uncharacteristically lugubrious, doing a Parkinson's shuffle atop the 457.37 'secondary' pivot rather than a sprightly jig. This implies AAPL may need to swoon in order to get a running start on 490.97.  Traders please note:  If the stock were to fall to p=423.78, that would trigger a mildly enticing 'mechanical' buy, stop 401.38. _______ UPDATE (Aug 18, 5:48 p.m.): AAPL needs to close above the 464.36 top of the pooch-screwing range of the last three days to get back in gear.

The stock's vertical climb reversed Friday from within a hair of a technical target I'd drum-rolled a while back, allowing subscribers to initiate short positions with puts that went in-the-black almost instantly, just as we should prefer.  We all ended the day wondering, however, how long it would take for The Thing That Wouldn't Die to rev its jets for another rampage.  I'd estimate that an eventual move to at least 490.97, the Hidden Pivot target shown in the chart, is an 80% shot, given the way short-covering madmen gapped the stock through two HP levels in just two days as August began.  By last week, though, buyers were overdue for a breather, even if not looking spent. Although a retracement to the red line (p=423.78) would trip a 'mechanical' buy, I'll suggest holding out for even better prices if we should decide to jump in at all. AAPL hasn't had a correction lasting longer than three consecutive days since before the March crash, but if it were to whip around early this week and take out last week's record peak on less than four days' rest, that would be amazing but also appalling, since it would imply a degree of heedlessness and greed on the part of buyers (including the Swiss central bank, apparently) that until now had been unimaginable. AAPL has friends in high places, but that doesn't mean they aren't just as crazy as lowly portfolio managers who are paid to stay fully invested at all times in just ten stocks. _______ UPDATE (Aug 10, 8:05 p.m. ET):  It turns out that Switzerland owns $6.3 billion worth of Apple shares, and that the burghers are continuing to add to this position with flim-flammery that even Powell & Co. must envy.  Here's the full story from Wolfe Richter. _______

In dollar terms, the nuclear short squeeze in AAPL that finished out the week was the most powerful and consequential in history. Friday's detonation catapulted Apple ahead of Aramco as the most valuable company in the world. That's not bad for a consumer-goods manufacturer whose main source of revenue is an overpriced smartphone. The rally in the stock amounted to a 10% gain, pushing the Cupertino firm's market cap to $1.817 trillion.  That's surely a record for financial markets on this planet, but for all we know it could have set a record for the galaxy. The sum is equal to 30 times projected sales, a bit rich considering much of the economic world has entered a depression or is close to one. For those interested in knowing where the stock is headed next, it looks all but certain to achieve a minimum 456.19, the Hidden Pivot target shown in the chart. ______ UPDATE (Aug 6, 11:12 pm. ET): The vertical pitch of Apple's rally is conceivably the stupidest thinggg happening in the galaxy right now, an orgy of greed and hubris that should embarrass not only Wall Street, but all of civilization.  However, the reason for it is not hard to fathom: Since every $1 rise in the price of the stock adds $4 billion of 'wealth' to the financial system, it becomes possible for just this one stock to postpone the collapse of America's public and private pension systems.  This looming catastrophe is inevitable and will start with the bankruptcy of Illinois, quickly metastasizing into more than two dozen other states.  All of them would become basket cases if AAPL were eventually to fall below $100, which is why it absolutely will.

Bears have lacked the will and the guts to follow through on last week's hard sell-off. Instead, AAPL has launched into a wafting rebound, punctuated Monday by an opportunistic leap on the opening bar. Shorts had better be prepared to get squeezed all the way up to D=387.84, a minor rally target shown in the chart. It will be scant consolation to AAPL skeptics at this point, but the failure of the opening-bar goosing to exceed  an external peak at 379.87 recorded last Thursday on the way down is a subtle sign that bulls' confidence is ebbing, even if only slightly. As a practical matter, this will enhance our odds for getting short  at midpoint and secondary Hidden Pivots, as well as D targets similar in degree to the ones shown. ______ UPDATE (Jul 28, 5:24 p.m. ET): So much for shorting into strength.  There was none, only a feeble opening that suggested DaBoyz were setting up a distribution day from the get-go rather than attempting to goose shorts off an oversold opening bar. Now watch AAPL fall to at least 359.52, the midpoint Hidden Pivot support of this pattern. You can scalp-trade some calls down there provided the stock gets within 3-4  cents of the target. _____ UPDATE (Jul 29, 8:04 p.m.): What on earth could I have been thinking when I predicted the stock would fall to at least 359.52?  This is the most popular stock on earth, and none of its torqued institutional sponsors are even thinking about parting with a single share. It looks bound now for at least 386.96, the target of the ersatz ABC pattern shown here. This impulse leg isn't good enough, even,  for government work, although I'm sure it will work perfectly well for AAPL. Jump on a pullback to 376.52 using

Today's downdraft generated a robust impulse leg on the daily chart, the first time this has occurred since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak in February. Supposedly, fears are growing that Trump's hardball tactics with China could put pressure on AAPL, which does nearly all of its assembly work in China. Why traders picked today to unload Apple shares is unclear, however, since the company's China problem has existed for nearly three years, ever since the tariff war began. Trumped warned Apple years ago to get out of China, but it would seem no one in Cupertino took him very  seriously. That didn't stop investors from piling into the stock since March, driving it into a ridiculously steep rally that was manifestly inured to troubles with China's Communist government. So how far could the stock fall?  That depends on whether the downtrend stretches on for another 2-3 days, breaching a 351.28 low recorded nearly a month ago. If it happens with no significant upward corrections along the way, that would add to the imputed power of the impulse leg, conceivably signaling the beginning of a new bear market.