Apple Stock Price and Forecast: AAPL earnings preview

AAPL stock closes barely unchanged on Monday after some wild swings.
Equity markets stage a massive afternoon rally to erase huge losses.
Apple reports earnings after the close on Thursday.

Ivan Brian FXStreet

Apple (AAPL) stock followed the wild swings experienced by many stocks on Monday as the equity market did a massive u-turn in the second half of the day. The morning session was ugly with the stock down 3% and things looking bleak ahead of the Fed meeting. However, an afternoon turnaround unfolded, catching many off guard. The reasons were many, but position squaring ahead of the Fed meeting today was a large part of the reason. We also had some SPX option movements based on gamma hedging as 4400 saw a large amount of volume. Apple followed the trend opening and quickly moved down to a low of $154.70, before rallying to close at $161.62. This meant Apple (AAPL) shares lost less than half a percent.

Apple Stock News

Analysts are for the most part bullish on Apple, but Goldman Sachs does generate more attention than most and it reiterated their $142 price target on Apple this morning ahead of earnings on Thursday. Goldman focuses more on the outlook rather than the actual results themselves. This contrasts with Morgan Stanley who last week remained bullish on their earnings outlook with the bank expecting an outperformance on iPhone deliveries for the quarter.

The average analyst expectation for Apple is to post earnings per share (EPS) of $1.89 on revenue of $118.28 billion. Apple has a pretty decent track record of beating analyst estimates, but the last quarter did see Apple miss estimates on the revenue side. Supply chain issues were a problem, and this issue will be closely watched for commentary on the outlook. AAPL has not missed on EPS since April 2016.

Apple Stock Forecast

The move in the first half of Monday broke some key technical levels, notably the support at $157. The next support at $153 remains intact. Strong support remains at $148 from the volume point of control. We have identified the bearish double top and bearish divergence, which gave an extended target of $150. This zone from $148 to $150 is strong support, not only in terms of volume, but also the 200-day moving average is at $148. Apple remains in a downtrend and earnings will now be the dominant theme. $167 is the bullish pivot.

Apple (AAPL) chart, daily

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Author

Ivan Brian

FXStreet

Ivan Brian started his career with AIB Bank in corporate finance and then worked for seven years at Baxter. He started as a macro analyst before becoming Head of Research and then CFO.

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