AAPL's brutal tumble on Friday looked bound at the close for a minimum 137.83, the 'secondary' Hidden Pivot in the thumbnail chart. Because this price point coincides with a key low recorded on last Monday's opening, sellers are unlikely to go for the gusto (i.e., D=134.59) until they've experienced a failed rally attempt from p2. A plunge in the first 30 minutes to p2=137.83 should be viewed as a buying opportunity, especially if you can craft a low-risk trigger using a tight rABC pattern with an a-b leg of no m ore than 20 cents. _____ UPDATE (Oct 13, 4:27 p.m.): The 134.59 target drum-rolled above nailed the low of a nearly 7% bounce that is one of the biggest ever for this stock in a single day. Only one subscriber commented on this -- he said he made money on the way down -- further affirming that subscribers have almost no interest in this stock. I get where you're at, but I will continue to track AAPL anyway because, as I like to remind you constantly, it is the only stock that matters: Get AAPL right, and you get the stock market right. In fact, you could have made money buying anything today when AAPL was bottoming within 22 cents (i.e., two-tenths of one percent) of the billboarded target. Here's a snapshot of the Masters of the Universe adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the world's store of "wealth" by goosing the stock into thin air.
How refreshing to see the Masters of the Universe choking on Apple shares Friday after efforts to hold the stock aloft until the bell collapsed. The stock finished on the low of the day, presumably bound for a test of June's watershed bottom at 129.04. Expect a tradeable bounce on the way down from the 136.06 Hidden Pivot target shown in the chart. The stock's vertical ascent from mid-June to mid-August never spread to the broad averages. That had been DaBoyz' intention, and it appeared they might succeed when AAPL got within 3.7% of new record highs on August 17. Alas, sustaining altitude until hoards of other stocks caught up proved too challenging, and AAPL began to roll down like an aerobatic plane in a hammerhead stall, Earlier, I described in detail how the stock's canny sponsors levitated it without risking much. This occurred mostly via short-squeeze rallies in thin, overnight markets, and with gap-up openings that allowed instantaneous leaps of $2-$4 on zero cash outlays. This trick will not work nearly as well now because perceptions concerning the company's prospects have darkened with the onset of recession in Europe, a key market. The U.S. consumer economy is close behind, and the one-two whammy is certain to depress sales of the pricey iPhone. Rick's Picks will continue to track AAPL closely and trade it aggressively in both directions. Get AAPL right and you get the stock market right. We've been doing it with consistent precision, so stay tuned. _______ UPDATE (Oct 3, 6:30 p.m.): The algos and hubcap thieves who work the night shift must be tuned to Rick's Picks, since they front-ran my 136.06 target by 34 cents. Ordinarily I would not assume they are on a target of mine like fleas, but in this case the pattern seemed
Friday's close beneath p=150.80 has shortened the odds that the 142.85 target we've been using as a worst-case number for the near term will be achieved. A further fall to at least p2=146.82 appears likely in the meantime, while a rally to p=154.77 should be used to get short 'mechanically'. I will provide more-detailed guidance in the chat room if prompted by your timely interest. If the trade were to be executed conventionally rather than with a 'camouflage' trigger, this gambit carries about $1600 of implied entry risk, based on four round lots and a stop-loss just above 'C' at 158.75. ______ UPDATE (Sep 27, 5:09 p.m.): The short I explicitly advised above would have been worth at least $1500 to any subscriber who did as suggested. The stage-managed, powerful short squeeze on the opening bar fell a nickel shy of p=154.77, but in practice that would not have made a difference if you used the usual reverse-pattern trigger. The bearish pattern has been working perfectly and the 142.85 target still obtains. ______ UPDATE (Sep 28, 10:22): A further rally to the green line (x=154.84) would trigger a moderately appealing 'mechanical' short, but if it's hit soon we'll want to be cautious about intercepting such a wicked spike. _____ UPDATE (Sep 29, 11:49 p.m.): We saw yet more evidence today that the stock's handlers have not yet acclimated to the fierce selling that is sinking their favorite stock. This morning they tried a trick they've repeated successfully many scores of times, pulling their bids on the opening bar in order to dry up the selling. This tried-and-true tactic succeeded briefly, but only because the 142.85 Hidden Pivot support given above precisely contained the initial plunge. But it gave way after a couple of hours under a barrage of selling, and even a
Wall Street's best and brightest are as clever and scurrilous as any broad-tosser who ever plied the Piccadilly Circus or Times Square, but they will have their dexterous hands full as they continue to distribute AAPL shares ahead of the crash below $100 that is coming. For the moment, the stock looks bound for the middling downside 'D' target at 145.89 shown in the inset. The pattern is choppy enough to qualify as gnarly, so bottom-fishing there will have a good chance of producing a profit. We might look to exit such a position by reversing it. The mild caveat is that the A-B leg here is 'sausage', which argues against the target working as precisely as we are used to. I haven't seen any evidence that subscribers are trading this stock, but please make your interest known if I am wrong. When AAPL hits 145.89, that will represent a 17% fall from mid-August's peak, which, amazingly, came within less than 4% of achieving new record highs (!) My hunch is that the stock's institutional sponsors want the stock to fall by at least 20%-30% before they start accumulating seriously again. Realize that their goal is no longer to push AAPL to new all-time highs, since that is probably impossible, but rather to buy it cheaply enough, and with sellers sufficiently depleted, to guarantee a profit on whatever short-squeeze rallies they can trigger off. Count on them to do this repeatedly as the Mother of All Bear Markets works its way to the bottom of the Marianas Trench over the next 2-3 years. ______ UPDATE (Sep 19, 8:10 p.m.): Today's short-squeeze was rigged in the usual way: Pull all bids ahead of the opening bell, exhausting sellers. This ploy almost never fails, and today it produced a bullish impulse leg
AAPL's quasi-criminal handlers created a bullish impulse leg on the daily chart Friday in the usual way, with a short squeeze on a volume-less opening bar. We'll respect the uptrend but trust it only as far as we could heave an anvil. In this case, that implies looking for a short-able top, or perhaps just a stall, at D=158.37 of the modest reverse pattern shown. If the stock pops above it there will be three opportunities for DaBoyz to increase the putative strength of the rally by exceeding each of the 'external' peaks nearby, the highest of them at 162.61 on August 29. ______ UPDATE (Sep 12, 10:51 p.m.): This is the steepest short-squeeze DaBoyz have managed since late July, and it has turned the hourly chat robustly impulsive. That implies it is not going to simply roll over and die, especially in answer to your prayers, and that any pullback must be regarded as corrective and therefore a buying opportunity. _______ UPDATE (Sep 13, 7:07 p.m.): Although AAPL might seem to have trashed my last update, that won't inhibit me from attempting to bottom-fish with a tight reverse-pattern 'C' anchored at 151.74. In any case, I wouldn't count out the scumballs who make their living by simply shaking this stock down and then running it back up on zero volume -- just as they've done hundreds of times. ______ UPDATE (Sep 16, 12:31 a.m.): After plummeting in the early going, AAPL got its best bounce of the day off 151.78, four cents from the number drum-rolled above. No one mentioned doing the trade, so I didn't track it. The subsequent relapse took the stock from 154.30 down to 151.58, and thence to 151.11 in after-hours trading. If AAPL continues to fall, use 148.58 as a minimum downside objective and a place
AAPL was overdue for a drubbing, especially since the stock could not have continued to hover in outer space when the broad averages finally got hit. Nor is there any compelling reason for the portfolio chimps who live off AAPL to put much effort into holding it aloft while other stocks continue to correct. You can see that a seemingly nasty fall to $150 would not change the menancingly bullish look of the chart or the likelihood of new record highs. Most immediately, there's a 162.40 downside target we can use as a minimum projection over the near term (30-min, A=174.90 on 8/18). ________ UPDATE (Aug 30, 5:06 p.m.): The bearish pattern shown in this chart, with a 151,15 downside target, is all we've got to work with at the moment, The impulse leg is not legitimate and the C-D leg has yet to touch p, but we'll give the pattern the benefit of the doubt as AAPL continues to make its way lower. Apple says iPhone sales are holding up fairly well, but with Europe headed into a possible economic depression, the market for overpriced/over-featured cell phones is about to crash along with consumer spending. ________ UPDATE (Aug 31, 11:40 p.m.): This chart revises the quite bearish target slightly upward to 151.38. Today's low just pennies from p=157.00 says the pattern is working and will yield good odds for trading its levels 'mechanically'. ________ UPDATE (Sep 3, 10:32 a.m.): 'Good odds', indeed! A straight-up 'mechanical' short at the green line would have produced an intraday profit of as much as $486 per round lot. The 151.38 target remains viable as a minimum downside objective for the near term. ______ UPDATE (Sep 7, 9:30 p.m.): My newly bullish outlook for the E-Mini S&Ps contrasts sharply with a still-bearish forecast for AAPL. I'll be
DaBoyz must have meant to perform the same sleazy trick they do two or three times a week, particularly on Fridays, letting AAPL fall on the opening to exhaust supply for a planned short squeeze. However, they evidently misjudged sellers' eagerness and wound up creating a quite robust impulse leg that surpassed no fewer than four prior lows, two of them 'external'. This implies the decline will continue to at least D=169.77 or perhaps lower for a more significant correction. AAPL lost Friday's mild tug of war with indexes that had wanted to fall harder, but now they can and probably will. The pattern looks ripe for 'mechanical' shorting, most favorably on a bounce to the green line, however unlikely. either Sunday night or in the early going on Monday.
What a shocker. The no-decision monkeys who have lived off AAPL's autopilot bull market have succeeded in levitating the stock to within a split hair of the 172.78 target I spotlighted here weeks ago. It was trading in the 140s then, and it seemed difficult to believe at the time that the stock could rise that much on punk earnings, a U.S. economy sinking into recession, and Apple Inc. unable to innovate its way out of a Glad bag. But just look at it! Another 6% and it'll be in record territory. I've documented the short-squeeze tactics that were used to goose the world's biggest-cap stock skyward with hardly any bullish buying or even cash outlays. It was a simple trick: Let the stock drop overnight until sellers are exhausted, then run it up shorts' wazoos on the opening bell. The rally has been a fraud every inch of the way, but there's no denying it worked. And now what? Can AAPL wait for the broad averages to catch up? Probably not, since the Nasdaq and even the FAANGs are trading closer to their bombed out lows than to their insane, all-time highs. It should be interesting to watch the DaBoyz try to vamp for a month or two while the U.S. economy continues to sink into the crapper. Stay tuned to this page and the chat room for the technical play-by-play. _____ UPDATE (Aug 15, 7:43 p.m. EDT): A feebler than usual short squeeze topped at 173.40, 0.3% above my target, so I recommended buying the expiring 165/160 put spread 16 times for 0.12. This is a 30-to-1 horse, so don't get your hopes too high. Offer eight of them to close for 0.25, good through Wednesday and contingent on the stock trading 170.00 or higher. _______ UPDATE (Aug 17,
Whatta guy! Nothing has happened to brighten the picture for Apple, but that hasn't stopped it from reversing out of a bear market abyss with such force that you'd think Covid-induced nuttiness was rampaging again. You've got to hand it to the institutional chimpanzees who have never sold a single share of the stock since Steve Jobs resurrected the company. They've shown unflagging confidence and limitless patience since the Great Financial Crash of 2007-08, waiting this time for the perfect opportunity to trigger off a short squeeze menacing enough to turn bears into panic-stricken buyers. Realize that this is the biggest-cap stock in the world, and that every inch of the rally would ordinarily require trainloads of money, were it propelled by merely bullish buying. Shorts have done all the lifting, though, into supply lightened by greed; by large, airy gaps in supply at odd hours of the night; and by the misplaced confidence of widows, pensioners and hayseeds enticed by the last stock-split. From a technical standpoint, the 172.78 target shown makes a logical and compelling upside target. It should be shorted aggressively, especially if you've made money on the way up. This Hidden Pivot is close enough to January's record high at 182.63 that its attainment would most surely get investors salivating over the prospect of another monster leg up for a bull market now in its 161st month. ______ UPDATE Aug 10, 8:15 p.m.): This short in AAPL is for entertainment only, since it already triggered at 168.93. It is similar to the trade I've suggested in ES, except that the price where I'd have anchored the 'C' high has already been exceeded. That makes it riskier than if we'd acted during the regular session. Theoretical entry risk is only about 40 cents per share nonetheless, with
AAPL looks all but certain to reach the 158.55 rally target we've been using for the last few weeks. Will it overshoot the Hidden Pivot, presaging a possible test of March's watershed high at 178? I doubt it, but we should be prepared for an outbreak of irrational exuberance nonetheless, since it would be short-covering all the way, impelled and manipulated by chimps who have lived on autopilot almost solely from AAPL's long bull market. They were never going to just roll over, and what we are seeing is a distribution for which they have been conducting drills and test runs, starting with a stock split that brought the price down to a level that the rubes could afford.
