Apple (AAPL) will announce earnings after today's close. I won't speculate on iPhone sales or likely Apple Watch orders. There are countless articles on the web covering those topics.
I do look at patterns and ask questions like ‘how has Apple stock responded to past earnings reports'. Time to crunch some numbers.
Let's take AAPL stock movement through all quarter's earnings over the last 11 years. That's 45 quarters of earnings. Has it been worth it to buy AAPL stock one day before earnings and hold it through the earnings announcement?
It turns out the best results have been from buying AAPL stock 1 day before any earnings announcement and selling it 30 trading sessions after the announcement. Of the 45 most recent quarterly reports, that strategy would have produced an average 7.6% gain, with 32 of the 45 quarters producing a gain (71%). Recent quarters have been much more reliable in generating gains:
Now since Apple, in recent years, has been sticking to rather regular product announcement and ship dates, there may be some pattern to specific quarterly results. And that's just what we see here. Looking at just the 2nd quarter announcements, typically in late April, we see a pattern that if it was a standalone trading system, we'd be bragging about it to every trader we talked to.
Of the 11 most recent quarterly reports, trading just Apple's April earnings announcements would have produced an average 9.4% gain, with gains in 9 out of 11 years (82%). If you are an option trader, you have to love those double-digit gains.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results and all that. Still, the track record suggests the odds are pretty good the market will be forgiving of Apple's earnings report and the stock will be up several weeks later.
Of course, there's much more you need to know and many more stocks you can capitalize upon each and every day. To find out more, please click on the following link: www.markettamer.com/seasonal
By Gregg Harris, MarketTamer Chief Technical Strategist
Copyright (C) 2015 Stock & Options Training LLC
Unless indicated otherwise, at the time of this writing, the author has no positions in any of the above-mentioned securities.
Gregg Harris is the Chief Technical Strategist at MarketTamer.com.
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