🚨 Trade Update: ASTS
We recommended ASTS on May 20, with a buy level of $91.30, targeting $109.00 (PT1) and $123.00 (PT2), with a stop-loss at $81.00.
The stock surged to a high of $107.59 Friday — within 1.3% of PT1 — before settling at $105.86. That’s a gain of approximately 16% from our entry in just three trading days, confirming the strength of the breakout thesis.
Managing the position from here: For those with a lower risk appetite, consider booking partial or full profits near the PT1 zone ($109.00) and raising your stop to a trailing level of $101.00 to protect gains. For those comfortable riding the momentum, PT2 at $123.00 remains in play — representing a potential 34% gain from entry.
Bottom line: The $101.00 trailing stop locks in a minimum gain of roughly 10% from entry, ensuring this trade stays profitable even on a pullback.
🚨 Trade Update: RGTI
We recommended RGTI on May 12, with a buy level of $21.60, targeting $32.00 (PT1) and $40.00 (PT2), with a stop-loss at $15.80 on a closing basis.
The stock consolidated near our buy zone for nearly seven trading days before triggering — a period of patience that is now paying off. Since crossing the $21.60 level, RGTI has surged to $26.42, a gain of over 22% from entry, backed by explosive volume: 148 million shares on May 21 and 204 million on May 22. The RSI has also pushed above 70, confirming strong upside momentum.
Bottom line: For those who haven’t entered yet, current levels still offer a viable entry with both targets intact — PT1 at $32.00 (21% upside from here) and PT2 at $40.00 (51% upside). Maintain the stop-loss at $15.80 on a closing basis.
HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ) just broke out of a multi-month symmetrical triangle on a rare 15%+ one-day surge — and the stock looks headed even higher.
As we’ll get to just ahead, the combination of an accelerating AI PC upgrade cycle, a multi-billion-dollar cost reduction and capital returns program, and a fresh technical breakout makes HPQ one of the more interesting setups on the board. Here’s what’s going on…
The Themes Behind the Move
HP Inc. is one of the world’s largest providers of personal computing and printing technology, designing and selling commercial and consumer desktops, notebooks, workstations, displays, printers, and related supplies and services across the United States and internationally. The company operates through three segments — Personal Systems (PCs and accessories), Printing (hardware, ink, supplies, and 3D/industrial print), and Corporate Investments (incubation and venture projects).
In plain English, when a business, government agency, or consumer needs a laptop, monitor, or printer, HP is one of a handful of vendors in the world that can deliver that hardware at scale, with global supply, support, and security baked in. Its near-term business hinges on the strength of the AI PC refresh cycle, its ability to pass through surging memory costs, and how well its $2 billion cost-cutting program offsets structural pressure in the printing segment.
HPQ’s latest move reflects a powerful confluence of developments — commercial, operational, and strategic — that have come together in rapid succession to fundamentally reframe how the market is pricing the stock heading into Q2 earnings.
| Theme / Catalyst | What Happened | Why Traders Care |
|---|---|---|
| Rare 15%+ one-day breakout | On May 22, 2026, HPQ shares jumped a rare 15.6% in a single afternoon session, driven by investor optimism around AI-powered PC demand and strong peer results from Lenovo (AI revenue +84%, overall revenue +27%), with traders positioning aggressively ahead of HP’s May 27 Q2 earnings report. | Moves of this magnitude are highly unusual for HP, which historically trades with low volatility — and signal a meaningful shift in how the market is pricing the AI PC narrative. After validating the trend at Q1 (AI PCs at 35% of shipments), HPQ is being repriced as a sector beneficiary, not a legacy name. |
| AI PC product momentum | In March 2026, HP unveiled a refreshed next-gen lineup including the EliteBook X G2 (with up to 85 TOPS NPU), the HP IQ on-device AI layer, quantum-resistant printers, and TPM Guard security. AI PCs represented 35% of HP’s Q1 shipments — up from 25% just two quarters earlier — and management is targeting 55% by end-2026. | AI PCs command higher average selling prices and premium margins, directly lifting the Personal Systems mix. The hardware refresh cycle has multi-year runway, and HP’s positioning at the high-NPU end of the market gives it pricing leverage that pure commodity PC names lack. |
| Sector tailwinds | The transition to AI PCs — laptops and desktops with on-device NPUs that reduce reliance on cloud compute — is triggering the largest hardware upgrade cycle since the Windows 10 transition. IDC has flagged overall PC shipments turning positive (+3% YoY), and peers Lenovo and Dell are confirming the trend with their own results. | Demand for premium AI PCs is structurally rising into 2026–2028. HP, as the #1 or #2 share player in commercial PCs globally, captures outsized benefit from any sector-wide upgrade wave and the resulting margin uplift. |
| Capital returns & cost program | On May 19, 2026, HP declared a $0.30 quarterly cash dividend (ex-date June 10, payable July 1) — implying a forward yield of roughly 4.75%. Alongside that, HP is executing a structural cost reduction program targeting $2.0 billion in annual savings, with $300M expected by end-FY26 and ~$1B by FY28. | A ~4.75% dividend yield provides a real income floor under the stock, while a multi-billion-dollar cost program creates a massive operational cushion to offset memory-cost pressure and printing-segment weakness. This is the kind of balance-sheet engineering that protects downside. |
| Fundamentals snapshot | Q1 FY2026 revenue came in at $14.4 billion (+6.9–7% YoY), driven by Personal Systems strength. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.81 beat consensus (+9% YoY). FY2026 guidance was held at $2.90–$3.20 non-GAAP EPS, with TTM revenue of ~$56.2 billion and free cash flow guidance of $2.8–$3.0 billion. | Revenue growth has reaccelerated to mid-single digits and EPS is beating, even with memory cost headwinds. With nearly $3 billion in annual FCF and a re-affirmed full-year outlook, HP has ample firepower to fund both the dividend and the AI PC investment cycle. |
| Analyst coverage | Among the 17 analysts covering HPQ, the average 12-month price target sits at $21.67, with a high of $30.00 and a low of $16.00. Recent moves include JPMorgan raising its target from $19 to $22 on May 15 (Neutral), and Morgan Stanley lifting its target from $16 to $17 on May 21. | Consensus targets still sit below current levels — reflecting analyst caution on memory costs and printing weakness — but the steady drumbeat of upward revisions tells you Wall Street is starting to play catch-up to the AI PC narrative. The high target at $30.00 implies meaningful upside still on the table once estimates roll. |
| Market conviction signal | The May 22 breakout came on volume of roughly 48.67 million shares — well above HP’s average daily turnover — and pushed the stock up +15.25% in a single session, decisively clearing the upper trendline of a multi-month symmetrical triangle. | When a normally low-volatility stock like HPQ breaks out on multiples of average volume and clears overhead resistance in one session, that’s institutional conviction — not retail momentum. Big money is positioning ahead of the May 27 print. |
| Upcoming triggers | Traders are watching Q2 FY2026 earnings on May 27, 2026 (after close, consensus ~$0.71 EPS), the Evercore TMT Global Conference on June 2, the BofA Global Technology Conference on June 3, and the AI PC mix climbing toward management’s 55% target by year-end. | A staggered set of high-conviction catalysts — earnings, two major sell-side conferences, and ongoing AI PC mix updates — each of which can independently move the stock through the summer. |
If needed, swipe or scroll sideways to view the full table.
Put it all together, and HPQ is looking less like a tired legacy PC maker and more like a commercially executing AI hardware franchise with reaccelerating revenue growth, premium-margin product mix, and a fortified capital returns program underwriting the next leg.
The story is getting stronger by the week, but the chart is what could determine whether this move has more room to run in the near term. Here are the bullish technical signals traders should be watching now.
Bullish Technical Signals
#1 Symmetrical Triangle Pattern Breakout: HPQ has broken out of a symmetrical triangle on the daily chart — a pattern defined by converging trendlines of lower highs and higher lows that compress volatility into an increasingly narrow range. This coiling reflects a tightening standoff between buyers and sellers, and it typically resolves with a sharp move in the direction of the prevailing pressure. The upside breakout, confirmed by a notable spike in volume (~48.67 million shares), signals that the consolidation phase has ended and momentum has shifted decisively in favor of the bulls.
HPQ – Daily Chart
#2 Price Above Key MAs: HPQ is trading above both its 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages — a configuration that confirms bullish short- and intermediate-term trend alignment. When price holds above both averages, it signals sustained buyer conviction rather than a fleeting bounce. These SMAs also serve as dynamic support levels; as long as price remains above them, pullbacks are more likely to attract buying interest than trigger further selling.
#3 Bullish Aroon: The Aroon indicator on the daily chart shows the Aroon-Up line at 100% while the Aroon-Down line is hovering near the lows, a configuration that signals new highs are being made far more recently than new lows. This is one of the cleanest possible Aroon readings — it tells you that the uptrend is not just intact but actively strengthening, with buyers in full control of the timing of new price extremes. Aroon readings at these extremes tend to mark trends with real follow-through, not exhaustion moves.
#4 Bullish ADX: The ADX panel confirms a trend in acceleration. The +DI line sits above the –DI line, indicating that buyers are controlling the trend’s direction. More importantly, the ADX line itself has risen from below the –DI and is now approaching the +DI — a signature move that marks the transition from a period of directionless consolidation into a strengthening, directional trend. This combination — dominant +DI plus a rising ADX — suggests the breakout has real momentum behind it, not just a one-day spike.
#5 Resistance-Turned-Support and Weekly Structure: Zooming out to the weekly chart, HPQ has reclaimed a former resistance zone at approximately $22.62 (marked by the pink dotted line) that now acts as support — a classic polarity flip that tends to anchor price during pullbacks. This level also sits above the breakout point of a multi-month descending trendline (pink dashed line), meaning the stock has cleared two layers of overhead supply. With price also trading above the 50-week SMA, the weekly structure aligns with the daily signals: the broader trend has turned, and buyers have recaptured control of the higher timeframe.
HPQ – Weekly Chart
#6 Bullish MACD: On the weekly chart, the MACD line has crossed above the signal line — a bullish crossover that carries more weight on the weekly timeframe than it would on a daily chart, because it filters out short-term noise. This crossover indicates that medium-term momentum is now accelerating to the upside, with buying pressure building at a pace that exceeds the longer-term average. Weekly MACD crossovers, particularly when they occur after an extended downtrend, have historically preceded sustained rallies rather than short-lived pops.
#7 Positive OBV: The weekly OBV (On-Balance Volume) line is trending higher, confirming that volume on advancing weeks is outpacing volume on declining weeks. This is an important validation signal: price breakouts that occur alongside rising OBV indicate genuine accumulation — institutional and informed buyers are adding to positions, not just short-covering or retail chasing. When OBV leads or confirms a price move, it increases confidence that the advance is supported by real capital flow.
Risks to Consider
Even strong setups can fail, especially in a cyclical hardware name like HP. A few things could knock the stock off course:
- A breakdown back below the symmetrical triangle breakout level on heavy volume
- Negative company-specific news or broader market weakness that pressures PC and tech hardware names — sentiment around hyperscaler and AI hardware spending remains a swing factor
- A massive spike in memory and storage costs, which have skyrocketed from 15–18% of HP’s PC bill of materials to roughly 35% — if HP cannot pass these through, Personal Systems margins (5.0% in Q1) will compress further
- Structural decline in the Printing segment, where consumers and enterprises are simply printing less and high-margin ink/supplies revenue continues to grind lower
- Ongoing CEO search creates execution uncertainty even though the interim CEO has called the transition “smooth”
- Recent insider selling, including CEO Enrique Lores (41,922 shares for ~$1.09M), Director Mary Anne Citrino (45,172 shares for ~$834K), and the Presidents of Personal Systems and Imaging & Printing — even if scheduled, the optics can dampen near-term sentiment
- Direct competition from Dell, Lenovo, and Apple in PCs, and continued price pressure from low-cost commodity OEMs
- Execution risk on the May 27 Q2 print — consensus is calling for ~$0.71 EPS, and any shortfall on Personal Systems margins or memory mitigation could quickly unwind the pre-earnings move
- Valuation risk — HPQ is currently trading above the $21.67 average analyst price target, leaving the stock vulnerable to near-term profit-taking if estimates don’t catch up quickly
The Bottom Line
HPQ is breaking out of a multi-month symmetrical triangle on the daily chart while reclaiming a key resistance-turned-support level on the weekly — a dual-timeframe technical setup that historically signals the start of a sustained move higher.
The fundamental story underneath the chart is just as strong: an AI PC mix already at 35% and climbing toward 55% by year-end, a $2 billion annual cost reduction program, and a ~4.75% dividend yield backed by ~$3 billion in annual free cash flow.
Combine that with multiple commercial and capital-markets catalysts staggered through summer — the May 27 Q2 print, Evercore TMT, BofA Global Tech, and the ongoing AI PC mix march — and HPQ looks like one of the more compelling risk-reward setups on the board right now.
If this is a trade you want to get in on, here’s how we’d play it. Below you’ll find our exact entry level, both price targets that imply 27%–46% potential upside, and the stop-loss we’re using to manage the downside.
Recommended Trade Setup
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Buy Level | Above approximately $26.00 |
| Price Target 1 | $33.00 — Potential upside: 27% |
| Price Target 2 | $38.00 — Potential upside: 46% |
| Timeframe | Next 3–6 months |
| Stop-Loss | $22.00 on a closing basis |
| Trade Invalidation | Void if price hits stop-loss before entry triggers |
If needed, swipe or scroll sideways to view the full table.
For a risk of approximately $4.00 per share, the target rewards are about $7.00 and $12.00 per share. That makes this roughly a 1:2 and 1:3 risk-reward trade. In other words, the setup offers nearly 2x to 3x more potential upside than downside.
Happy Trading!
Tara and Greg