 Welcome traders to another Tick Mill Earnings season preview with me, Patrick Munley. Before we jump into today's presentation, as always, want to adhere to the risk disclaimer. A most pertinent to today's content is the fact that the views and opinions expressed by me are solely mine, they are not addictive or representative of those held by Tick Mill UK or Tick Mill Europe. Limited. Let's jump into today's report. We are looking at Apple. Apple is set to announce earnings after the close of trade in New York today. We're looking for a consensus earnings per share of $1.26 on revenues of $90 billion. During the same period a year ago, Apple earned $1.24 a share on sales of $83.4 billion. Last quarter, Apple didn't provide official guidance for its Q4 2022 earnings. Apple has had a strong showing against Android competitors in the past three years. Smartphone shipments have stalled lately, though, first amid COVID and lockdowns, and now from higher inflation, recession and layoffs as consumers choose between food or fuel. Nevertheless, over the past 11 quarters, Apple has increased its share in the global smartphone market. Unit shipments tend to have a cyclical peak in Q4 following iPhone introductions in the September-October period of each year. More importantly, Apple's share of the smartphone market has increased at greater rates. On a yearly basis between 2019 and 2021, Apple has significantly increased its unit share of smartphones versus the Android handsets. Apple achieved record June quarter services set to revenue of $19.6 billion, up 12% and including all-time revenue records for music, cloud services, Apple Care and payment services. Apple now has more than 860 million paid subscribers across the services on its platform, which is up more than $160 million during the prior 12 months alone. The main question going forward for Apple is the performance of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Plus Generation 1 and Snapdragon 8 Plus Generation 2, which will be formally announced at its annual Snapdragon Summit event in mid-November of this year. Chinese smartphone sales have been stymied in the past year due primarily to COVID lockdowns, but also because of the underperformance of Apple's made at Samsung's factory foundry in China. The move by Qualcomm to move to the Samsung foundry, which is the same foundry making the Apple A16 Bionic Processor. This could be a strong headwind for Apple in that region. Let's take a look at some of the statistical training patterns around Apple earnings releases. Apple shares a moved lower in the immediate aftermath of earnings, 7 out of 12 previous reports. On average, stock moved up 0.6% in the first day of trading after the company's reports in its earnings. Based on the previous 12 earnings releases, Apple is more likely to trade higher one day after earnings for an average gain of 0.3%. On average, the stock has moved higher by 2.4% one week after earnings. From a volatility perspective, options traders are pricing in a 4.6% move on earnings, and noteworthy that the stock has averaged about a 3.5% move in recent quarters. Moving to a flow and sentiment perspective, there has been notable buying of 58,645 contracts of the bullish 155 call expiring on Friday. In general though, options order flow has been bearish. Apple's share price has drifted down, a negative 8% post its prior earnings announcement. Using the last 12 quarters of days, the average drift between earnings is about 10.2%. Let's pull up the Apple chart here and see if we can identify any near-term trading opportunities. From a technical perspective, we've obviously been in that down-draft prior to the last earnings release. Put in a decent bottom up just below 135, got some nice divergence here on the 4-hour timeframe. That set up a technical bounce, and we've achieved or came just shy of the target there at 152.73%. For me at the moment, whilst 145 holds a support, I would be looking for longs through the 153 handle, initially targeting a move up into the 156.79 area. If we can get through there on a closing basis, then attention moves to the 160 handle, and we do have a gap above there at 163. Any loss of the 145 handle is bearish development, immediately looking then for a test down to 140. If we take out the 140 on a closing basis, we look for a retest of prior cycle lows at 134. I would highlight on the weekly timeframe, we do have a technical objective on the downside versus the 176 swing high at 123, and that also coincides there with the weekly high volume load. There are some levels to keep in mind if the earnings report does significantly miss expectations here, and if we do see more weakness in terms of general market sentiment as well, those are some downside targets to have in mind, but for now constructive above 145, looking for 155 and then on to 160. As always traders, plan the trade, the plan, and most importantly, manage all this. Until next time, thanks very much.