Matt Giannino
Founder & CEO of Market Moves, Options-Selling Education
Selling puts on the 2x daily Apple ETF beats selling them on Apple itself, since it is the same Apple bet with double the volatility and fatter premiums. Apple's implied volatility sits around 25% versus about 50% for the leveraged fund. Sticking to giants above a $200B market cap, and selling only when Ripster EMA clouds are green on both daily and weekly charts, would have avoided every prolonged drawdown of the past two years. x.com x.com
Apple is a safe haven amid AI-stock volatility and will gain momentum if it persists over the next two weeks through the midterms. New products and another defensive day bring a momentum push toward $358, then $367 in November closer. x.com
Apple's price is held up by index dispersion and gamma positioning rather than its business value. Its supposed bull case is that, as a non-AI name, it moves inversely to AI stocks; only flows strong enough to break the gamma grip permit price discovery. Fair value is 75% below the current price. x.com
Apple's roughly 40 times trailing and 37 times forward earnings make the shares too expensive ahead of next week's results. A short looks reasonable, though a sell-the-news reaction after earnings remains uncertain. x.com x.com
Apple's roughly 35x forward earnings premium looks unsustainable. If fear around the AI trade fades, its gains could stall or reverse. x.com x.com
Apple's upcoming earnings should be strong after record numbers in its seasonally weakest quarter. Large options buyers keep adding: a $10M call sweep went into next July's $400 calls, and the October $360 call whale rolled its other half for $30M in total. Institutional buy volume rose tenfold off this month's low, the stock's largest notional volume ever, on a retest of its breakout above the 2022 bear-market highs. x.com x.com x.com
Apple's valuation pays too hefty a premium for its expected long-term earnings growth. Its forward P/E-to-growth ratio is 2.58; even if the market sees its hardware moat and ability to exploit others' AI investments despite underinvesting itself as a winning strategy, that premium is too high. x.com
Apple's balance sheet and lack of spend keep a bid under its stock whether the market rises or falls. That bid gets stronger with foldable phones that break. x.com
Apple is a good hedge in this market because it benefits from AI without having to put up the capex. It has the best distribution on the planet and is not going anywhere. x.com
Apple has the most predictable cash flows, including future cash flows, and that dependability appears to be what investors reward. Its P/E is about 40 versus 27 for Nvidia, 22 for Meta and 16 for Alphabet; Meta's free cash flow has turned negative. Leveraged build-out companies have been hit hardest while Apple has outperformed, but Apple investors could be wrong and the point at which its premium becomes too high remains open. x.com x.com x.com
Apple looks like a short because paying 36x next-twelve-months EPS seems crazy, and the stock is up against resistance from its 2020-2021 highs on a linear chart. x.com x.com x.com
