Today’s an important day for many reasons.  The FOMC obviously faces some important decisions regarding monetary policy – chiefly, how to maintain a dovish stance (i.e. keep stocks rising) given the recent blowout GDP data.

Another important development, however, is high AAPL can pop on the open.  It reached as high as 213 overnight, which is significant.  This would put it at the top of the channel which signaled its dramatic swoon to within 2 points of our downside target last November — producing some pretty robust trading results.

Members will recall it broke out of this channel in Aug 2018, following the steeper red channel to its Oct 3 highs [see AAPL: Engineering a Breakout.] When the breakout failed on Nov 12, it was followed by a breakdown of the red channel and the SMA200 — as strong a set of bearish signals as you’re likely to ever come across.

Given that the correlation between AAPL and SPX is obviously so high, AAPL’s return to the top of the purple channel is a watershed moment for the meltup of the past four months. I can certainly understand Tim Apple’s decision to pull out all the stops at yesterday’s pep rally earning’s call, but a failure to break out again (215ish) could be troubling for the overall market.

Meanwhile, futures are up sharply on the expectation that AAPL’s good fortune and the Fed’s infallible brilliance will goose the broader market.  It won’t…at least today.

continued for members.. (more…)