Does the turn around from 507 area signifies a trend change?
Disclosure : No position now but on watch for long.EDIT 14.Dec.2012: The long set up in AAPL did not play out. As mentioned in comments below, the trend is still short.
I am not a stock trader but I do dabble into some popular US stocks from time to time with small position as a proxy for broader market investor sentiment. I have mainly traded AAPL from short side for sometime with reasonable success. Of course, there will be charts on internet which will show that $10,000 invested in AAPL 10 year ago would have been $667,000 by now. Well hind sight is beautiful, but neither was I trading 10 years ago nor did I have $10,000 to invest/trade.
Before the option expiry on 16th November 2012, I have been commenting about a lot of puts being purchased on AAPL to protect from downside. AAPL was in down trend since 25th September 2012 after hitting its all time high and progressively the options skews were indicating that lot of protection being bought.
This coupled with lacklustre volume and low short interest indicated that people have not been selling outright. Option expiry day had huge volume in AAPL, it was highest volume since March 2012. This was coupled with a classic reversal, high volume sell followed by high volume buys around key support levels. I feel what was happening is that investors were just covering up potential option exercises of their puts (which must be too much in the money) by buying at key levels. After all margin implications of carrying short AAPL in a portfolio are huge compared to carrying equivalent positions in AAPL puts.
In any case, it appears that all the above resulted into a sort of capitulation and then AAPL has made a nice move upwards, including a gap up from Friday close at 527.
My charts now indicate that a long signal is generated but I am on side line waiting a confirmation. Typically after a strong trend in one direction, you do get false alarms and periods of consolidation which needs to be traded differently compared to trending markets. Also this is a shorted holiday weekend and lot of big players stay out of markets and volumes remain low. However the key to taking a long position would be that AAPL should show sign of follow through after a small pullback. The gap up level (527) is key support now and should not be breached for the long side to remain intact. Also I would be watching the reaction at 545 to 530 zone if it shows sign of holding up and providing buying activity. May be AAPL permabear might be buying AAPL after all
… For a good long, potential initial targets are 628-650 area followed by new all time highs if the tanker does not stop.
