Are you using an Apple device to view this site? Are you helping the apple cause or using a competitor’s device? You could hedge your upcoming earnings trade by being long and using an Android device. You could be short while using your iPad Air. At the very least you should be armed with these stats:
Assume Apple is at $553
Apple has moved an average of USD$27.10 in either direction. This is slightly more than the current options markets indicate. The move has been (in today’s stock prices) as high as USD$47.00 and as low as USD$72.90 (ouch). Of the past 13 quarterly reports, the week has ended positive 6 times. So there is no significant directional pattern. On a typical week, at this price you could expect to see Apple in the range of USD$530.5 and USD$574.00. This is most likely not a typical week.
This report is of particular interest because it includes the holiday sales of it’s products. The products of most interest are the iPhone (50% of revenue) and iPads (20% of revenue). As usual analysts and investors are looking for growth in these products. There are usually a lot of metrics estimating these sales figures. Newer versions of these products have been released before the end of the holiday quarter. A lot of attention is always paid to the initial and subsequent sales estimates after product releases. There should be adequate data to guide the expectations.
The emerging markets components of the iPhone sales is also a hot topic. Although the most recent deal with China Mobile will not have an effect on this quarter’s figures. One thing to note is that the local price of the iPhone in most emerging markets are relatively high as compared to the US market. This is because of the subsidy in the phone’s price from the US cellular carriers. It will be interesting to see if in the newer markets if the phones have a growth trajectory like that in the US.
Another point to be scrutinized will be profit margins. The profit margins also tend to increase with the age of the device. As time passes the manufacturing may become more efficient and upfront research and development is likely amortized down. So for the new devices perhaps slimmer than expected profit margins may be seen as a negative initially.
Also general market sentiment may play more of factor than usual since the market has ended last week down from it’s recent highs.
No matter what, manage your expectations, manage your risk, manage your trades.
Good luck and trade rationally.