A Close Look at Apple Ahead of This Week's Key Earnings

After taking a quick and unscientific scan of news headlines I get the sense many market watchers are expecting Apple (AAPL) to beat consensus earnings forecasts and keep the recent stock market uptick going. Let's drill down on the charts and see what they tell us this morning. 

In the daily bar chart of AAPL, below, we can see a sideways to lower trading pattern the past 12 months. The shares have made lower highs in January, March and August and lower lows into June. We see a potential higher low in October. Prices are still below the declining 50-day moving average line and below the declining 200-day line.

The On-Balance-Volume (OBV) line shows weakness from August into October and has not improved much in recent days. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) oscillator has crossed to the upside in October to generate a cover shorts buy signal. This is not the same as an outright buy signal. 

In the weekly Japanese candlestick chart of AAPL, below, we can see the past three years of price action. A longer-term picture helps you get away from short-term jiggles that can blur your decisions. In this chart we can see a long-term rally followed by a long-term topping pattern. Prices are trading below the declining 40-week moving average line.

The weekly OBV line shows weakness from February. The MACD oscillator is below the zero line in bearish territory. 

In this daily Point and Figure chart of AAPL, below, we can see a potential downside price target in the $135-$134 area. 

In this weekly Point and Figure chart of AAPL, below, we see a potential downside price target in the $111 area. 

Bottom-line strategy: I have no special knowledge or insight about what AAPL will be telling shareholders and analysts when they report their latest quarterly numbers on Thursday but the charts are not a table pounding buy at this point in time. 

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