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..

This morning’s ES/SPX charts:

ES has technically broken out of its rising wedge… …though it looks less meaningful on the VIX chart below.

Algo factors remain moderately bearish this morning, with VIX having survived the latest threat to break down.Currencies are still bearish, though USDJPY remains so close to the SMA200 as to represent a pretty solid lifeline if needed (which it has been for the past two months.

EURUSD remains in a likely backtest — but potentially aiming for its SMA200 again… …as DXY’s push above .618 resistance remains in remission.And CL and RB continue to look weak, having retreated from a test of their SMa10s. Last, the bond picture is still bearish.  I’ll touch on this some more when updating yesterday’s big picture post.

UPDATE:  EOD

AAPL put in a nice tag and strong reversal on the .786.  While the .886 is still a possibility, it would mean breaking back into the broken purple channel.  At this point, I’d look for a backtest of the SMA200 and/or the white channel bottom.