The Technical Setup Ahead of AAPL Earnings Foretold the Post-Earnings Outcome
by Mike Paulenoff
August 2, 2026 • 12:38 PM EDT
Good Sunday Afternoon, MPTraders!
Last Thursday afternoon, ahead of AAPL's Earnings, this is what we discussed about the stock's probable price path in reaction to the news:
Unless AAPL produces something extraordinary, or otherwise announces some unknown bullish catalyst, my pattern work has a very difficult time expecting anything other than a "best-case" sell-the-news scenario in reaction to Earnings. I can make a compelling argument that the upleg from the 6/26/26 low at 273.33 to the 7/29/26 ATH at 344.57 is complete, and that as good as the news might appear, AAPL has nowhere to go but into a correction that will press the stock into the 305-320 support window initially... Last is 333.87...
Fast-forward to the post-Earnings price action, we see that AAPL reacted negatively to a relatively strong Earnings Report atop a six-week, 26% advance to new ATHs into Earnings, which set Earnings expectations at an extremely high-- and likely unattainable-- bar.
As so it was, AAPL pivoted to the downside from Thursday's 4 P ET close at 333.43 to a spike low at 300.00 in Friday's pre-market session-- a nosedive of 9% in a matter of hours.
Furthermore, the structure of the decline from the ATH of 344.57 (7/29/26) to last Friday's low at 300.00 (7/31/26) exhibits bearish form, and as such, warns me that after a recovery bounce to 318-322 (optimal counter-trend near-term rally target zone), AAPL will be vulnerable to rolling over into another intense bout of corrective weakness that projects to the 275-280 area for a challenge of the dominant up trendline from the April 2025 pivot low at 168.00...
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