AAPL's Kiss of Death

Some of you longer term members may remember the post every so often of Goldman Sachs "Free" trade recommendation and the results of such. The first red flag in any of this is Goldman Sachs who, well who is said to trade against their own clients. Secondly I could never accept that these companies would ever give out beneficial information to you for free, they are the furthest thing from a charity, but...

If you were already predisposed to being an AAPL long and fan of the company, then how might you take their release of their new AAPL target of $145 up from $130?

Just on a random search, lets look at some past Goldman calls of this nature.

Goldman Lesson and some Odds and Ends... October 16, 2013...

"with some free advice from Mr. Stoppler, which is an ironic name because the last 6 or 7 trade recommendations he's put out have been "Stop-plerred" out. "

Back then it was another free trade that made the "Stoppler" track record 7 of 8 trades stopped out. The short USD/JPY looked and ended like this...

Stopped out and this wasn't even a trade with more than a 2:1 risk/reward ratio. The question is, do you believe that GS was actually short USD/JPY as they had recommended? Whether GS is smart money or not is not the point, the point is which side of the trade do you think they were on?

I could keep going, I believe by the end of 2013 it was 9 consecutive failed "Free" trade ideas.

So now they're upping their target on AAPL, the question once again is what side of the trade do you think they are on?

We've had plenty of AAPL posts recently: AAPL Management, AAPL Update, Quick AAPL Update, etc.

While most of the long to intermediate charts haven't changed much, AAPL also has a similar look to QQQ's Igloo/Chimney and this is what the 3C charts in that area look like...

AAPL intraday 1 min.

No matter what Goldman thinks of AAPL, good or bad, the one thing they know is that without the hedge fund heard there to provide "Strong hand support" that doesn't waver according to 48 hour price movements like retail, it's darn hard to keep price up without that institutional sponsorship and you probably recall funds such as Appaloosa closing out their entire AAPL position in Q4 2014.

We'll keep an ongoing eye on AAPL, but...  Food for thought.