“Apple’s $500 close has nothing to do with market manipulation so stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense and learn something!” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “A small subset of readers will believe what they want to believe no matter what type of information gets placed in front of them, but remember this is coming from one of Apple’s biggest defenders as of late.”

“The big money is not sitting in a room changing the hands of a clock or rolling back miles on an odometer on Friday afternoon to make sure that, magically, AAPL closes where they want it to be,” Pendola writes. “Sorry.”

Pendola writes, “There’s a perfectly logical explanation, illustrated in plain English, as told to me by Neil Pearson, University of Illinois Professor of Finance and Harry A. Brandt Distinguished Professor of Financial Markets and Options, back in May 2011. I researched the subject and contacted the professor to authoritatively counter the pure crap ‘opinion’ that options traders work together to get AAPL to close wherever they want it to close on options expiration day [which was Friday].”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Brawndo Drinker" for the heads up.]

Related article:
Why did Apple close at exactly $500 on Friday? – January 19, 2013