Apple, Alphabet And Advanced Micro Devices: Lack of Higher Highs

The July consumer price index came in lower than previous months, but a few big-name tech stocks failed to get all that excited about the news. It might be that expectations about the metric had already been baked into prices. Also, it’s not exactly a certainty that the Fed will stop with the interest rate hikes.

Apple
AAPL
ended the week up by .01%, Alphabet
GOOG
closed up by 4.98% and Advanced Micro Devices
AMD
ended it with a 2.45% increase. It’s good to have up weeks, of course, but with the “inflation is cooling” news, you might think that it would be enough to break above the earlier June/July highs — but no.

None of those NASDAQ
NDAQ
-100 components found enough buying to take out their previous peaks. Many factors enter into the picture but, generally, this contradicts the current “rally is broadening out” narrative that’s begun to appear in the financial media. Let’s look at the price charts.

Apple, Google And Advanced Micro Devices Daily Price Charts

There is no argument that the uptrend is powerful from the early 2023 lows until the present — it’s just a little unusual that Apple failed to join the NASDAQ-100 in the “new highs” category. Investors took the opportunity to take some profits rather than continue with the intense buying.

After peaking in early June, this huge component of the NASDAQ-100 dropped to below its 50-day moving average in July. The stock rallied mightily last week but, again, you have to wonder why it’s not back above the previous high, given the powerful strength in the rest of the index. If “the rally is broadening out” is accurate, then Alphabet should have a higher high here.

It’s another nice uptrend from late 2022 to summertime, 2023, but this major NASDAQ-100 component is failing to establish a higher high. You can see the red-dotted downtrend line connecting the June high with this week’s much lower high. It looks like plenty of buying at the 50-day moving average but not enough to power upward like the other stocks in the index.

As a comparison, here’s what the NVIDIA daily price chart looks like:

It continues to be one of the hottest stocks in the NASDAQ-100 as investors can’t seem to get enough of the shares. NVIDIA hit $480 on Friday before selling kicked in and took it back down below the opening price, but what a week.

If the rally were broadening out from just NVIDIA and a handful of other tech names, the “A” stocks in the index — Apple, Alphabet and Advanced Micro Devices — should be participating with a “higher highs” look.

This week, they tried but failed to get there.