Caution Alert For Apple
![Mike Paulenoff](/assets/cdn/static/mptrader/images/mike-paulenoff.gif?id=853baf5e048aaccf8689bd216813fa18)
by Mike Paulenoff
July 19, 2021 • 12:00 AM EDT
Last Wednesday (July 14), with AAPL trading at 148.65 but off of its new all-time high at 150, Mike Paulenoff alerted MPTrader members to potentially consequential yellow caution flags emerging in his technical setup work.
Mike wrote:
This morning, JPM raised its Target Price to 175, one day after Citigroup raised its Target Price to 170. Do I hear 180... 185? Crickets at the moment. The Street is falling all over itself in its bullish view of AAPL. Of the 42 Wall Street analysts who cover Apple (and are monitored by Seeking Alpha), 32 are Very Bullish or Bullish, 7 are Neutral, and 3 are Bearish or Very Bearish. Clearly, The Street's love affair with AAPL continues unabated.
That said, to raise a Target Price atop a 20%+ up-move in just the last 8 weeks certainly takes nerve, but might not be the wisest move from a nearer term technical perspective.
AAPL hit a new ATH at 150 this AM, but acts tired, and as we discussed yesterday, exhibits glaring Momentum divergences that suggest the June-July portion of its up-leg is exhausted, and is in need of a rest or pullback. I am watching 145.80. If violated and sustained, my work will trigger initial signals that AAPL is entering a corrective period. Downside follow-through to and beneath 143.35 will exacerbate the selling pressure towards a retest of the 140 to 138 prior upside breakout plateau.
Fast-forward to Friday's close, and we find AAPL ended last week at 145.92, off of an intraday low at 145.88, which does not leave much of a cushion above Mike's next lower "line in the sand" at 145.80.
Apple is scheduled to report earnings on Tuesday July 27th after the close. Given the stock's precarious near-term technical position as of Friday's close (see our chart), we should be mindful of AAPL weakness ahead of earnings.
A "healthy" pullback of 7% to 10% off of the recent all-time-high at 150 projects an optimal target window of 135 to 140 ahead of earnings.
Join us in our MPTrader discussion room for Mike's ongoing intraday analysis of AAPL, as well as many other stocks, ETFs, macro indices, cryptocurrencies, commodities that are of interest to our members.
This past Monday, July 15, right after the opening bell, Mike Paulenoff cautioned our members about the technical setup in TSLA (Tesla), writing:"TSLA is in the grasp of a corrective period off of last Thurs (7/11) high at 271.00 that hit an initial low at 231.52 last Friday (7/12). The big rebound off of 231.52 to 262.72 during this AM's pre-market trading has the right look of an "intervening bounce" between two distinct corrective declines (the first being 271 to 231.52).
This week's selection for our Top Call -- VZ (Verizon Communications) -- is less a function of its recent success and more a reflection of Mike's technical setup work that projects gains in the days and weeks ahead. On June 17, one of our MPTrader members (FJB) alerted us to his fundamental work on VZ. After seeing his positive comments, Mike Paulenoff posted the following technical interpretation of the pattern setup:"... somewhere above 36.
On the morning of June 20, Mike Paulenoff posted a heads-up about AMD to MPTrader members, writing:"AMD has been upgraded this AM by Piper Sandler with a Target Price of 175. Piper reiterated its OverWeight rating and has made AMD its top big-cap pick for the remainder of 2024. Technically, AMD has its challenges and its work cut out for it to climb to Piper's 175 target. My attached 4-hour chart setup argues that for starters, AMD needs to climb above 158.
On the afternoon of May 7, 2024, ahead of earnings the next morning, this is what I discussed with MPTrader members about a forthcoming opportunistic technical set in UBER (Uber Technologies):UBER reports earnings tomorrow morning before the opening bell. My Big Picture setup suggests strongly that the bull phase that commenced in June 2022 at 19.90 still has unfinished business on the upside into the 90-100 target window.
This coming week is filled with consequential macro and micro "events," such as NVDA's 10 for 1 stock split, CPI, PPI, and TSLA's annual meeting, during which shareholders will vote to approve or reject Elon Musk's 2018, $56 billion pay package.Arguably, the most significant "event" for the technology sector, in particular, and for the major equity indices is Apple Inc.'s WWDC Conference, which begins tomorrow.