(San Francisco)

Want to forecast at where Apple’s stock price is headed? There is a good trick for doing so. The method is to look at the earnings and share price moves of Apple’s suppliers. About a third of suppliers report earnings before Apple does, and many of them derive a high portion of their sales from the company. Therefore, one can fairly well predict Apple’s earnings and likely moves. For instance, Apple has been on a tear since its earnings on Tuesday, and it would have been easy to see from the previously released supplier earnings.

FINSUM: This will not always work and some of the value is probably eaten up by algorithmic traders, but still, it seems a good predictive indicator.