Apple has a bit of an ugly daily chart, but the weekly chart is still pretty nice, with the stock at the bottom of the long term channel.  The financials were skewed this year because the iPhone was shifted from the summer months to this quarter.  However, the initial market research is saying that the Kindle Fire will actually be a strong competitor to the iPad this holiday season, so who knows if they’ll be able to keep up their ridiculous growth.  Either way, it looks like AAPL is getting to a decent buy point if you’ve been waiting for a while.

Just when it looked like the market was ready to fall through some support levels, we get a day like today.  Maybe the US is about to default, but don’t tell the tech industry.  After GOOG got back on track last week, a slew of other tech giants hit homeruns on their earnings calls, including IBM, AAPL, and VMW.  While all interesting stocks to own right now, make sure you play them objectively since it’s easy to fall in love with companies you know and to hold on to them too long after the bubble bursts. 

I have no doubt we’re forming another tech bubble, but don’t get too conservative too early.  It could go on for another year or 2 or 5 and you’d be leaving too much money on the table trying to guess crash beforehand.  Just manage your risk and stay strong with your stops. 

The market still seems to be heading south, but there’s some hope for the future.  Some stalwarts like GOOG and BAC disappointed last week, but with INTC and VMW surprising, we may see techs bounce back sooner rather than later.  A bunch of other big techs will be releasing their earnings soon, including a little company named Apple, so we’ll see how what the feeling is heading into the summer.  Keep a close eye on the top of your watch list since the recent pullback made some enticing entry points on these earnings surprise breakouts.

The market has been in a pretty long uptrend since September 2010.  There was a patchy spot in November, and then a few places that looked like we might pull back, but overall the bulls have passed every test up to this point.  We’re at another iffy spot, but to really claim a downtrend we’d have to fall through $1275.  I stopped out on the last of my long term positions today, but will be ready to jump back in some new things should the market continue its march upwards.  A lot of the stocks that I’ve posted recently are still valid ideas, and the typical long term favorites are also interesting (AAPL, GOOG, AMZN, etc), but I’ll be refreshing the watch list in the near future…

Every time you think the market’s going to drop, it finds new strength.  While not quite continuing the uptrend yet, it’s drifting away from the bottom of the price channel.  The decreasing volume says this could just be an upwards correction, but it’s interesting nonetheless.  Some of the leaders that I’ve been hoping for a new entry point on, like F or AAPL, haven’t come down out of the clouds at all.  Fortunately, AMZN is experiencing some profit taking before their earnings call though.  I’ll be watching that one closely…

The volume of the drop today outpaced the breakout that brought us here, so it will be interesting to see what happens.  If the market follows through with its correction, RIMM may be a nice short play.  If not, it should at least be interesting to day trade on some bounce back days.  Either way, all of these stocks are interesting to watch if you like tech stuff for the long run too.

The market showed some strength again after a midday test of support.  CAT’s earnings tanked, but were better than expectations which was enough for the bulls to jump on.  AAPL released after the close and said they did well last quarter, so it will be interesting to see if the positive retail sentiment can carry through tomorrow.  The $950 line remains the line to watch.

The first stock screen beginning investors implicitly learn is to think about the products and services they really like in their lives and look up whether the companies are public.  Palm happens to be one of those companies for me now after spending some time with a Palm Pre.  If you want a phone that lets you play games and listen to music, the iPhone is probably the only thing you should be looking at.  However, if you’re like me and you want something as a personal organizer, email, messaging, web browser, etc. device, I don’t see how you could live without the multitasking Palm Pre. 

I know I’m abnormal, but I always have at least a few different web pages loading and a couple conversations going on at the same time, which the Pre allows me to do seamlessly.  Surfing the internet on the iPhone feels like going back to pre tabbed browser days.  Is the Pre going to take over the smartphone market?  Probably not — at least not in the immediate future.  As much as the AAPL fanboys will hate me making this comparison, the iPhone is essentially the Windows of cell phones, and the Pre is a little mix of Ubuntu and OS X.  Each have their technical advantages and disadvantages, but if you aren’t leaps and bounds above the competition it’s tough getting people to switch, as Apple has found out in their PC war.  Fortunately for Palm, the turn over on phones is a lot quicker than on computers.

If Apple decides to stay AT&T exclusive, look for this race to get a lot closer much quicker.  Also, pay attention to GOOG’s big surge of Android phones coming later this year, MSFT’s WinMo 7, and RIMM who’s starting to become a bit of a dark horse after dominating the market for so long.  Of these companies, as a trader I would selfishly prefer that PALM or RIMM win the war, since dominating the mobile phone market would make a much smaller impact percentagewise to the bottom lines of any of the other gorillas.  Other companies that are interesting are ARM and Imagination Technologies, since they make the chips that all of the phones are using right now, so any expansion of the market would be good for them.  However, they’re both on the London exchange (ARM has an ADR under ARMH though).  Expect more posts on the subject in the future…

Was this more than just a bounce?  I’ll reserve judgment since we’re still in the same channel.  The most notable thing today for me was that AAPL had their holiday earnings call after the bell, and of course they exceeded expectations again.  That allows them to stay towards the top of my watchlist, but of course I’m not sold on picking up any long term positions still.  Let’s see how everyone else did during the holidays last year.

Retailers were worse than expected, Citigroup (C) is falling apart, and oil continues to die.  That all adds up to another down day with increasing volume now.  The holidays make reading the volume funny, but the rise in volume during the immediate downtrend is unmistakable.  On top of all that, after the market close Apple (AAPL) confirmed the fanboy’s most dreaded fear: Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence. 

Everyone knows how important Jobs is to the company, but I believe they’ve grown bigger than him now.  The roadmap is probably laid out for the next couple years already, and it would take some serious missteps to kill the momentum that they have now.  Hope that people overreact to the news and give the stock a beating, and at the very least it will present a nice swing trade.  No guarantees on how AAPL will deal with this over the extended timeframe (2+ years), but I still see them as an attractive stock if the market recovers before then.