Toppy Tuesday – Don't Sit Under the AAPL Tree!

We're just waiting on Apple's earnings this evening.

While we are long-term bullish on the stock, we have pulled our short-term bullish positions – in case they miss and spike lower – at which point we will be BUYBUYBUYing while the rest of the suckers are selling.  This is AAPL's weakest quarter during a weak product cycle – it's madness to expect great numbers and, LONG-TERM, we're comfortable playing for a $400 floor but, short-term – anything can happen. 

As you can see from Dave Fry's SPY chart, volume was miserably low yesterday, rendering the day's action meaningless.  AAPL's earings will have a huge impact on both the Nasdaq and the S&P, with AAPL accounting for almost 5% of the S&P 500's total earnings.  

Overall, barely 50% of the companies are beating their revenue targets and those revenue targets are not very exclting:  MO missed this morning with revenues down 1.2%, BEAV had 15.3% lower revenues than last year and lowered guidance, CIT dropped 14.1%, DD down 0.7%, IRWD down 33.6%, LXK – 3.1%, LMT -4.3%, MTG -17.8% (and housing is supposed to be coming back!), RSH – 0.5% with a massive miss on earnings too (-0.53 per $3 share) and even Dow component TRV was 0.7% lighter on the revenue side than last year while blowing away earnings estimates ($2.13 vs $1.60 expected).  

IN PROGRESS