The AfterPay Touch Group Ltd (ASX: APT) share price is up nearly 8% to $22.50 this lunchtime despite the buy-now-pay-later credit provider releasing no specific news to the market.
Just last Friday afternoon I wrote that technical traders may send AfterPay shares higher on Monday after it closed Friday's trading session at a session and multi-month high of $20.95.
It seems then that the buy signals are flashing red for technical or momentum traders in a popular stock on the basis of it breaching relative strength indications and periodic moving averages higher.
Indeed some traders simply screen for shares at or approaching 52-week highs with the likes of Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG), Dicker Data Ltd (ASX: DDR) and BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) receiving buyer support today.
AfterPay is now closing in on a record share price high of $23 and I expect some of the buying is also in anticipation of the group providing a trading update this week or next as to its operational performance for the quarter ending March 31 2019.
I'm drawing this inference on the basis it normally provides quarterly trading updates and provided one on April 11 2018 for the March 2018 quarter.
If we do see a trading update AfterPay is likely to reveal more breakneck growth at its U.S. business, but investors and speculators need to ask themselves how much growth is already baked into a valuation that now stands around over $5.3 billion on my calculations.
As stated before I'm fence sitting on AfterPay with a hold rating, but I would not be surprised to see it race higher on its next trading update.
