Setting Up a Bollinger Band Squeeze and Triangle Play in Apple AAPL
While most traders have gone cold on Apple (AAPL) – understandably so – it may be worth your time to take another look at this tightly compressed stock that may be setting up a breakout event.
Let’s start with a Bollinger Band “Squeeze Play” Chart of Apple:
I drew a grey rectangle around the “Value Area” or multi-month sideways price action in Apple shares.
Current “potential price breakout” boundaries exist near $515 per share (support) and $540 (resistance).
Note the similar set-up or pattern that took place in November 2013.
I also highlighted prior “Bollinger Band Squeeze” set-ups or visual compressions (tightening/narrowing) of the standard Bollinger Band indicator.
The “Bollinger Band Width” indicator simply displays the price difference between the upper and lower band.
You can see that volatility – or price movement – is cyclical and tends to alternate between periods of range compression/contraction (like now) and range expansion or breakout impulse movements.
Using this logic, we can watch Apple shares for a potential “Breakout” or Squeeze Play on a breakout beyond the current boundaries.
When setting up a breakout event, we prefer to be neutral (not trying to predict which direction price will break) but instead look for a continuation move on a breakout trigger.
Immediate upside breakout targets include the prior high near $555/$560 while downside impulse targets include $490 (simple level planning).
To make matters more interesting, Apple shares are forming another intraday Triangle Pattern:
Shares formed a similar compression or triangle pattern in early January ahead of a large downside gap impulse.
The breakout event wasn’t tradable from this perspective, as price gapped into the target ($500) without a trigger-break beyond the lower trendline.
For now, intraday traders have both a short-term Fibonacci Grid ($523, $532, and $541) for reference along with the compressing ‘triangle’ price trendlines I drew that intersect the $525 and $535 price levels.
Continue watching these levels – and the higher frame rectangle trendlines – for any sign (and opportunity to trade) a break free of the $530 magnet “Value Area.”
Follow along with members of the Daily Commentary and Idealized Trades summaries for real-time updates and additional trade planning.
Corey Rosenbloom, CMT
Afraid to Trade.com
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Corey’s new book The Complete Trading Course (Wiley Finance) is now available along with the newly released Profiting from the Life Cycle of a Stock Trend presentation (also from Wiley).