I bet some of you thought I was referring to Wednesday. As always, I don’t have an answer to the “now what”, which is probably for the best. 😀
Actually, “over the hump” refers to how AAPL’s short-term charts look from June 9 to today. AAPL had a nice run out of the gate this week after the divsion by 7, but ran into resistance at 95 early on Tuesday (which itself is already well within a “battleground price area” from a couple of years ago). Now AAPL’s hovering around 92, which is still support for now.
Who knows what trigger or combination of triggers (the market, EU tax story, etc.) sparked the sudden down move in AAPL, but let’s see if the charts and few technicals I follow can provide a bit of price action context, if nothing else. (Click for full resolution charts)
5-min chart:
– “Bearish below”, apparently. (I’m referring to the 5-min chart notes from yesterday’s post)
– Note how the micro-timeframe bear flag measured move from June 11 (about .75 points) was exceeded in today’s trading (around a 2-point move lower).
– So, is that 2-point down move, resulting in another micro-timeframe bear flag that might be forming end-of-day (potential bearish price target of around 90 or so)? I guess we’ll see what happens in a few sessions.
– Head and shoulders formation watch, starting from around June 5. AAPL hasn’t formed a right shoulder as yet. Notably, AAPL hasn’t really had downside follow-through from other micro-timeframe head and shoulders formations from what I can recall since the late April earnings release.
Hourly chart:
– Looks like it might be the beginnings of a volatility compression resolution to the downside plus significant range expansion. Yes, one timeframe, one indicator, but it does look different. AAPL had similar-trending price action from May 14-16, but the hourly candles didn’t break below the Bollinger Bands to this extent, and range expansion on “Day 1” was from .74 to 1.63 points of bandwidth, vs. the 1.24 to 2.93 Bollinger bandwidth range today.
– On the other hand, AAPL closed trading with two hourly hammer candles. We’ll see if that “hinted” at a bounce in the next few trading days.
– A more significant wedge-type pattern forming? Too early to tell, but trendline “rules” are the same – bullish on “decisive breakout” above the top green downtrend line, bearish on “decisive breakdown” below the reference line (which is almost at 92).
Wrapping up with the daily chart:
– Not too much to observe here. Watching for any MACD-h crossover; watching to see if blue/light green trendlines will become relevant; the intermediate uptrend is still fine, with AAPL still above the EMA-13 for now (as well as mid-channel, which will be crossing above 90 soon). Mega-macro trendline not in play, as AAPL is well over 87.
– AAPL’s daily candle engulfed June 9’s gains, and also June 5’s (didn’t quite engulf the June 6 red candle). I could be wrong, but that seems like a caution signal at least short-term.
– As far as the intraday retrace, this looks like the largest open-to-last-price intraday slump since October 29, 2013. AAPL has had bigger losses since then on a day-to-day basis (e.g. Air Pocket II on January 28), but not on an “intraday” basis as best I can tell. Worth noting, in my humble opinion.
I’m as optimistic for Apple the company as ever, but hey, these particular posts are about the charts, and per my could-easily-be-wrong “interpretation”, it looks like AAPL may be undergoing a change in composure for the moment. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all settles out.
See you on the virtual exchange floor Friday.
The AAPL Tree 