AAPL closes Friday at $200.85. That "Max Pain" feelin' ... but will it be $160 or $260 for July after WWDC? It's chart time!
Max Pain, always so close, but usually a few cents off.
So AAPL closed at 200.85 on Friday 30th May 2025. Was that Max Pain? I'm not sure. The most painful aspect of today was watching another round of Trump Tim & Tariff bashing and listening to previously-respectable journalists asking Trump will he was WFH at the White House on his thoughts about Macron's wife punching Macron in the chops on the Air France presidential jet before walking down to the tarmac togeher. Both seemed more interested in the tarmac than one another, but sadly, the runway wasn't getting any love either. No French Kisses for anyone.
Today, there actually was some interesting options action. AAPL stonked on the way down all day and, predictably, rose on the back of a Trump driven risk-off-for-Friday rally in case he mentioned China. Which he did. He said President Xi had been "whispering" to him and there would be "news soon." These two should get a room! They've been at in all over the world of late, and nowhere more steeped in privacy and discretion than Switzerland.
You get the impression First Lady Macron got it right though, and Trump likely wishes he could do the same to Xi Jing Ping (whose face is already curiuousl flat, a bit like a panda's).
Onto two charts: One showing the rise after the fall today, and the steep covered selling into the final few minutes on enormous volume. You can see the peak at almost $202 before the retracement in the final few minutes.
Arguably though, the longer-term chart below of 18.months (well, in most people's eyes, except Ron's of course, who has held for 28 years), showing AAPL has really gone nowhere in about 18 months especially accounting for inflation, and is back at its old pre-WWDC high of last year June 2024, stuck in broad downtrend from its round-abouts $255 peak to $200 now with lower highs and lower lows, which as anyone who does (or doesn't love TA) understands is "not a good thing."
AAPL since November 2023. More importantly, the March 2025 peak. The light blue are is the share price, the three white lines the Bollinger Bands, and the diagonal trendline just that, extrapolating out where AAPL broadly has suffered resistance in what's a very slowly emergeing Head and Shoulders patter (not a shampoo for the uninitiated).
OUTCOME AND BREAKDOWN:
Pattern Recognition: Head and Shoulders (Bearish Reversal)
A classic head and shoulders pattern involves:
- A left shoulder (initial peak),
- A head (a higher peak),
- A right shoulder (lower high),
- And a neckline (support level that, when broken, confirms the pattern).
Applied to this Chart:
Timeframe: ~18 months on AAPL
Left Shoulder: Peaks around July–August 2024
Head: Clear high in December 2024–Mar 2025, around $240–$260
Right Shoulder: March–May 2025, lower high around $220–$169
Neckline: Approx $205–$215 (connect the dips between the shoulders)
Note - right shoulder pattern is not confirmed and still forming, perfectly in sync with WWDC and the expiry of tariff extension delays.
It doesn’t line up perfectly with volume confirmation (the right shoulder doesn’t decline on significantly lower volume), but visually and structurally it’s very close.
Breakdown & Current Price Action: bearish
- The downward trendline from the head is being respected.
- The stock appears to be testing the neckline now or has recently broken it, depending on your neckline drawing precision.
- Volume increased slightly on the down legs, supporting a bearish bias.
Implication:
If this is indeed a confirmed head and shoulders:
Target Price: Measure the distance from the head to the neckline, then subtract it from the neckline.
~$250 (head) – ~$180 (neckline) = $70
Breakdown target = $120 on a total implosion, which coincides with my previously stated $150–$170 zone, amplified by a slashing of the earrings multiple from 25 to 16.
This is not a prediction. I am putting this out there so the extreme risk can be seen starkly, with rationale, with the risk reward being an extreme. I expect this to be more widely scrutinised in coming weeks by analyst.
Verdict:
It passes muster as a plausible head and shoulders. Whether institutional players see it that way too will depend on:
- Confirmation via closing below neckline
- Market-wide sentiment on AI, tariffs, and inflation
- Fed/tariff/judicial news cycles acting as macro noise
What the hell happens (or not) at WWDC 2025 in a few weeks time
A breakout suggest $230 to me, tariffs aside or a breakdown possibly piercing $150 on a perfect storm of tariffs and product launch failures. At least temporarily, but then it'll be down to GMs & earnings and any way you look at it, short-term these have to be in question.
A breakdown supports my earlier $150–$170 range thesis from over a month ago (made before the stock went sub <$200 and then hit $169) especially if the neckline breaks cleanly on volume to the downside.
A Broader Question:
The question is, given this sell-off is not just tariff related (most other stocks still hover at their ATHs), and is-and began-mainly to do with operational mishaps from post WWDC 2024, post-IP16 launch and post "Year of the long Knives" for senior Apple executives in charge of a litany of failed projets incouding its supposed crowning glory, "AI.", is AAPL going to find any reason to break through downtrending resistance at $220 for WWDC, or hit its peak?
Finally if there's no news of anything except "Something On the Horizon," to paraphrase the WWDC invitation, will the PE multiple AAPL currently enjoys start to be sliced as earnings growth drops to nothing, leaving the share price to nose dive into Fall 2025 in a repeat of $2024? If so, should tariffs not be resolved, $160 could easily be called pretty reasonable as a valuation on a lowered PE multiple.
I don't know either, but the chart sure as hell doesn't look promising; Tim Cook had better have a few "one more things" in his pocket if AAPL is going to break out and stay over that trendline for more than a token gesture. $400 for 2027 was my prediciton if execution was flawless. It hasn't been. Its been "doom."
I did call $260 for Q1 2025 6 months early, in July 2024 in an uncannily accurate prediction.
But this year? You couldn't pay me to take a position in anything - especially a stock under Chinese control, Presidential blackmail, and a bedraggled CEO wasting time in unecessary court cases fighting pointless battles tilting at windmills instead of making peace with them and having a punch up with Trump.
