Monday Evening Thread

AAPL Daily Chart

Apple closed below the lower Bollinger band (584.49) today.  It has not done that since 11/21/2011 (green arrow) when it was testing the 200 day simple moving average from above.  It bounced on less than impressive (less than average) volume then.  Today volume was the highest since 03/15 when the stock printed a big red candle and closed at 585.56. 

The ellipse highlights the gap that just begs to be filled.  The bottom of the gap is 568.18 and the 50 day is now 559.  Tomorrow those figures will be even closer together (it's a math thing) and I will be watching that level very closely.  It could prove to be a great buy point with a super tight stop for very small risk.

Monday Afternoon Thread

AAPL and GOOG together make up over 20% of the Nazz 100 as I understand it. AAPL itself has the largest weighting in the SP500. So these market heavyweights must be taken into account. Can the market move up without them? Yes. Will it be hard? Yes.

AAPL, after a mere 2 hours, has already traded over 19,000,000 shares. The 50 day average volume is "only" 18,120,000. The chart for PCLN, another market leader, looks about the same, with heavy volume. GOOG looks the same, with volume already exceeding the 50 day average.

I varnished something this morning and am working on my earnings list. Trade safe.

Monday Morning Thread

Gator's Chart of the Day: ORLY

O'Reilly Automotive reports earnings on Wednesday, April 25th after market.  It has been moving steadily higher since the last report in late January when it reacted poorly with a "sell the news" response.  That is likely to happen again in this market but it is also likely that it will continue to perform well until that event.  Notice the sharp run it made into the last report.

I think it is unlikely that ORLY will move through 100 (it's the round number thing) but it would not surprise me to see it get close before it reports.  Of course if the rest of the market corrects O'Reilly will probably pull back too.