AAPL in Advance of Earnings: A Truly Smart Options Strategy

MarketsMuse.com Strike Price update takes a swipe at the plethora of sell-side analysts already dueling on air in advance of Apple Inc.’s April 27 quarterly earnings release (folks who will be proffering their respective EPS outlook post mortems and assortment of “consensus” talking points and take-aways after Tim Cook steps away from the conference call microphone). Instead, our MarketsMuse Option mart experts decided to share a uniquely thoughtful trade strategy for those fluent in options and agnostic as to the short-term stock price impact of mundane metrics that include a fresh look at Apple Watch orders and backlog of orders, or whether revenue reported conformed to the general consensus of Wall Street researchers.

The thoughtful idea is only for truly macro-friendly traders and professional investors, not for those who maintain “a longer-than-before-lunch-but before-the closing bell” approach to investment management. The AAPL  options idea in question (based on and intended to express a positive view on the company’s share price over medium-to-longer-term) is rare, as it is exclusively focused on a thesis that is driven by intellectual, macro-style rational reasoning, which requires one to embrace a disciplined approach to the overall investment process.

In the case of the noise already surrounding AAPL earnings, the idea is courtesy of widely-cited-by-mainstream media (and frequent MM contributor) Neil Azous, the principal of global macro think tank Rareview Macro and publisher of the investment newsletter Sight Beyond Sight. It starts with distilling the jibber jabber that is typical to CNBC guest bloviators and pontificaters and discounts the emotions of momentary price ticks  based on whether the Apple Watch will soon be followed by an Apple Car. Instead, the Alpha capture Apple of an idea is based on expert fundamental analysis, a global perspective that is very similar in style to the 2 prior Apple Inc-related ‘calls’ that Azous advanced in Feb and March of this year  (re: Apple Swiss Franc bond issuance and March (AAPL / GOOG options trade).

Without further ‘background’, the trade idea makes for great reading by option market intellects, especially when considering that the expert in question is considered to be a Hedge Fund Industry Rising Star (nominee for Institutional Investor’s 2015 award), via a $300mil model porfolio, he is outperforming the leading global macro strategy investing peers, and within the context of this post, an expert who is batting 1000% and is 2:2 (as in home runs) when it comes to taking a bite out of and best leveraging the action in Apple Inc.

The fresh-off-the-press (April 21) AAPL options-centric trade idea is easily-accessed via the archives section of the Rareview Macro website (subscription required, Free Trials are available to newbies). For Twitterites, Rareview Macro updates can be followed via @RareviewMacro.

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