Apple stock sat dead for seven months. Did nothing. Flatlined like your portfolio after you discovered leveraged ETFs. Then it ripped 20% off the June low and now trades two dollars below an all-time high.
The options market noticed.
Apparently something unusual is happening in Apple options into earnings. The headline won't say what that unusual thing is because financial journalists get paid by the word and clarity is the enemy of employment. Could be elevated implied volatility. Could be skew doing something weird. Could be some dipsh*t buying a million dollars in weekly calls because he watched a YouTube video titled "This One Apple Trade Will Change Your Life."
Here's what matters: Apple went nowhere for seven months and retail traders stayed patient. They waited. They read the charts. They respected the process. Then the stock finally moved and they bought calls three dollars from the all-time high with earnings four days away.
Perfectly timed, as always.
The unusual activity probably just means implied volatility spiked because earnings are Thursday and half the market cap of the S&P 500 reports this week. But some analyst at a bank needed content for the morning note so now we've got a headline about Apple options doing something unusual. They're not curing cancer. They're not achieving sentience. They're pricing in a binary event like they do every single quarter.
Retail sees unusual and thinks opportunity. Institutions see unusual and think exit liquidity.
Apple could beat earnings by 30% and the stock will drop two percent because Tim Cook coughed during the conference call and some algorithm interpreted it as weak forward guidance.
Photo by Sumudu Mohottige on Unsplash
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