AAPL missed!
Fortunately, we were well-prepared for this eventuality as I had said way back on July 10th, in Member Chat, that AAPL was “too big to succeed” (commentary also featured in Stock World Weekly on the 15th). I also said, at the time regarding AAPL: “Where was my buy point – $555? That’s a long way down to support if they fail $600.” We had called for taking the bullish AAPL money and running the previous Thursday (July 5th) in my morning Alert to Members, as they topped out that morning at about $610. We were a bit early with that call (AAPL hit $619.87 the next week) but, on the whole, our bearish flip on AAPL (and the broader market) has served us well.
In yesterday’s Member Chat, we had one bearish earnings spread on AAPL as well as an aggressive play on SQQQ, the Nasdaq ultra-short, because we expected the Nasdaq to fail along with AAPL (and AMZN is next!) on their earnings. Our SQQQ trade grabbed the Sept $50/60 bull call spread, offset by short puts on some stocks we are accumulating for our Income Portfolio for a net free trade but our dreams of a big pay-off on the spread will be put on hold today as a sudden burst of stimulus talk has turned the indexes back up, with the Dow now 200 points off the bottom in the Futures (7:50) at 12,660.
I already sent out an Alert to Members this morning, pointing out what manipulated BS this was as the WSJ’s Jon Hisenrath issued what amounted to nothing more than some well-timed speculation on imminent Fed action into yesterday’s close that has been picked up by the MSM as a fact and popped the Dow a full 100 points into yesterday’s close – erasing 1/2 of a disastrous day in minutes. At the moment (7:54), the Dow Futures (/YM) make an excellent short below the 12,650 line so excuse me while I hit “publish” on this partial post so our Members can see it.
IN PROGRESS
