Today’s chart is of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which manufactures and markets mobile communication and media devices, personal computing products, and portable digital music players worldwide.


Click to enlarge

What I Am Looking At:

• Outperformance on a year-over-year basis, +35%.

• Short-term trend remains down.

• Facing resistance from the declining 40-day moving average and the downtrend line (blue).

• Major January call open interest resides at the 550 strike (mostly bought-to-open) which could pressure shares lower if resistance is not taken out quickly.

• Volume by price indicating possible resistance zone between $580-600.

• Ten-day buy-to-open call/put ratio is 1.51.

• For every 147 open calls there remains 100 open puts, which is close to an extreme in optimism.

• Since August 2012 short interest has grown by 67% but only represents 2% of the float.

• Thirty-six out of 38 analysts covering AAPL rate the shares a “buy” or better.

This article by Tony Venosa was originally published on Schaeffer's Investment Research.

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