Earlier today, Market Insights highlighted the general weakness in technology. But there’s one huge exception to that statement: Apple (AAPL).
Tim Cook’s smart-phone behemoth made a new high this morning, and has set new records in nine of the 13 trading sessions this month.
The gains followed a breakout through the key $200 level after AAPL reported a transformational quarter. Investors loved the company’s ability to sell at higher prices and generate new revenue from services. It helps justify higher multiples and fits into a theme of turnaround stories this earnings season.
To quickly generalize, there seems to be at least two major problems in other tech names. First, a handful of rock-star companies with rapid user growth seem to have hit a wall: Netflix (NFLX), Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR).
Secondly, there’s been a barrage of worrisome news in the semiconductor space: slowing revenue, worries of demand peaking and the impact of trade wars.
We ran some numbers on symbols in the technology space to count how many sessions have passed since their 52-week highs. (As cited on recent webinars, clients can run similar scans on RadarScreen®.) Here’s a list of some popular tickers, as of yesterday’s close:
- Apple (AAPL): 1 day since its 52-week high.
- Alphabet (GOOGL): 15 days since its 52-week high.
- Facebook (FB): 17 days since its 52-week high.
- Microsoft (MSFT): 17 days since its 52-week high.
- Paypal (PYPL): 17 days since its 52-week high.
- SPDR Technology ETF (XLK): 17 days since its 52-week high.
- Netflix (NFLX): 40 days since its 52-week high.
- Twitter (TWTR): 44 days since its 52-week high.
- Nvidia (NVDA): 45 days since its 52-week high.
- Intel (INTC): 53 days since its 52-week high.
- Micron Technology (MU): 53 days since its 52-week high.
- Semiconductor ETF (SMH): 110 days since its 52-week high.
