An AAPL Post-Venezuela Vision Pro Intraday Update: $268 Must Hold
Apple’s post-Venezuela wobble isn’t about Caracas, more about gravity. AAPL has overshot on Ives’ hopium, AVP is already priced as a write-off. The only level that matters near-term is $268. Above it: noisy optimism. Below it: stops, slides, and a reminder this is a value story, not a growth myth.
I’ll keep it brief, remarking on pre-Xmas and Post-NY action:
After calling for $272 for most of December and explaining why, AAPL pretty much stuck precisely to the script and closed the year out at $271.
Tommo_UK
Why $272 is too high for AAPL
For anyone who guffawed along with me when the AAPL touched $288 amidst Dan Ives and Amit driven euphoria (always a great sell signal) and sold going into Christmas, congrats! You can buy back if you really want to and pocket a cool $20.
Today’s action isn’t about Venezuela - the market doesn’t care and if it did, oil would be down, not up, on the implications of a tidal wave of new capacity hitting OPEC-constrained supply over the next few years if the US coup - sorry - “narco-regime special operation” succeeds.
AAPL is on the Lower Bollinger on a drift down from the very reasonably worded Raymond James report which rightly pointed out that near-term execution and expectations are baked into AAPL at this level, and to move higher would require an unreasonably rich multiple given the as yet hoped for, but not yet visible, opportunities that countless rumoured and scheduled new products and services may or may not deliver, but are still “known unknowns.”
AVP flopping (again) is not a negative or positive for the stock; it’s been written off anyway as a material impact on the stock in the near term. RIP AVP, Long Live Gen 3 (whatever that is). Sorry Ron.
If this is purely a technical pullback, $268 should hold looking at the simple chart below.
Oversold conditions are beginning to show through, RSI is finally heading down on rising selling volume clearly illustrating post-end of year profit taking and sensible liquidation of traders who bought into the “Ives Santa Clause Rally” pitch and found themselves acting as ersatz bag holders instead.
FWIW, Dan Ives is a great profit-taking signal. If you over-lay his super-bullish calls on AAPL for the lat few years — especially his March 2025 call ”I’ve just returned from Asia and it’s all suuuuper there - AAPL to $325” shortly before the stock reaches to $167 —you’ll know what I mean.
Tommo_UK
The Dan Ives Effect: Sell when he screams buy. Buy when there’s blood in the streets (no blood in Venezuela, no reason to buy).
His calls almost always align with a decent pullback and trading opportunity. Nice guy, questionable sartorial tastes, but a frothing bull who wouldn’t know what a bear was until one swiped him across the nose.
$268 is both strong technical support and algo-heaven. However any sustained selling below $268, and there will be be a slew of stops taken out until $262 provides some support.
Market mania or Trump invading Greenland aside (or China imposing sanctions on US goods in retaliation for Trump freezing Venezuelan oil exports to China and debt repayments to them, along with other fabulous 2026 geopolitical posibilities), expect vacillation between $262 and $280.
Personally, I feel AAPL is way overvalued at this point above $262 and is riding high on high hopes and strong spin on iPhone 17 sales alone. That is not enough to justify a PE of 35-40 for a pedestrian grower, and not a growth stock.
AAPL took out its lagging trajectory in autumn 2025 on beliefs of it morphing into something… more than just “the iPhone company.”
Until Apple genuinely demonstrates it’s not just all about iPhones and shows me the goods they‘ve been promising and dropping the ball on for almost 4 years on the trot, I’m still stalling on handling out hall passes to Cook & Co.
“In Cook We Trust” is a trite trope at this point, because although he’s a brilliant financial engineer and kept AAPL afloat amidst a sea of product misses, it’s those product misses which define the company, as opposed to the CEO and over-inflated margins thanks to buybacks, financial services, and selling Apple Care insurance.
On a top line basis, and product execution, Apple has well and truly flopped for some time now.
Renting Gemini from Google and hiring “the second guy from Google” to replace “the first guy from Google” to oversea its implementation so Siri can finally do what it was designed and capable of in 2011, is not progress.
It’s paralysis.
Anyone who was around back then, and remembers the promise of Apple’s ”Knowledge Navigator” concept in 1987 will understand exactly what I’m talking about. If you don’t, well, you won’t understand the gargantuan missed opportunity Apple baked in thanks to Cook’s cowardice over Siri — an acquisition which should have handed AI and LLM and what I called SenseOS to Apple on a plate a decade before anyone else even had a thought about it,
A reminder of what Apple could have done, a decade ago, if it had chosen a “golden path” for Siri, instead of lobotomising it:
Tommo_UK
Where Apple could have been in 2015, but still hasn’t delivered in 2026. #epicfail
QED.
Tommo_UK, London 5th January 2026
© 2026 TOMMO.FYI
💡 Reach out to me using the Confidential Drop Box form below.
CONTACT ME DIRECTLY: discreetly (and anonymously if you prefer)
👉 I’ll reach out personally, selectively, and with respect for your time and position, depending on the nature of your drop.
