“Here is what happened to Apple stock in the last second of regular trading [on Friday], courtesy of Nanex,” Tyler Durden writes for Zero Hedge.
“Unlike traditional flash crashes where the trade is an HFT error, or a few shares traded through the entire bid or offer stack,” Durden writes, “in this case it looks like a very premeditated unloading of some 800K shares (some $350 million worth) of AAPL in the last second, with the full knowledge it was shake the market.”
Durden writes, “Why anyone would want (or wait until the very last second) to do that, while covering the offsetting ES short in the pair trade, to ramp the market into the close, is anyone’s guess.”
See all of the charts in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stay comatose, SEC.
800k that would be a hedge fund
now the real question is when will they start buying again and pump it back up to 540 and i would say that would be in the next 3 months or so
Pretty stupid to sell when the price is low.
Not if you can sell at a time when any bad news will trigger a weekend of worry. The stock will be guaranteed to open low on Monday really low and you may see a huge buyback. Easily earning 6-8%.
If the company wasn’t being blasted in the news and there wasn’t such a negative sentiment out there, this wouldn’t work.
I just found out that it was Samsung who sold those 800,000 shares Friday afternoon. Dirty bastards!
Samdung would have to sell 800,000,000,000,000,000 Galaxy phones to make enough profit to buy that many Apple shares.
Who knows, maybe they did?
Because AAPL had, at that time, taken back the “Most Valuable Company” title from XOM, and the market manipulator who dumped these shares wanted a full weekend of “Apple loses Most Valuable Company Crown” news stories to run rings around the globe, not just a Friday afternoon worth of them.
Nowadays, perception is everything. Just look at who’s currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
you almost made a whole comment without a political spin, keep trying
Merely illustrating “perception is everything” with the best example of current times:
An unqualified, anti-American, affirmative action, race-baiting, class warfare-instigating, “community organizer,” with no practical experience who was elected only for his ability to lie, read others’ words off a teleprompter, and mainly because of the color of his skin.
And yet he’s doing so much better than the last president.
How so? Number of food stamp recipients? Bussing the uneducated indigent to the polls? Number of drone strikes on civilians? Destabilizing the Middle East (Egypt, Syria, ignoring Israel, etc.)? Number of U.S. unemployed? Contribution to the U.S. debt?
Barack Obama, July 3, 2008:
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 [G.W. Bush] added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
Obama Inauguration, Jan. 20, 2009: U.S. National Debt: $10.6 trillion.
Current day, January 26, 2013: U.S. National Debt: $16.4 trillion.
Obama has, so far, driven up our national debt, by $5.8 billion in just his first 4 years.
That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
Suckers.
It’s a crying shame that you don’t turn that critical eye towards Republicans as well. But, of course, the party you belong to can never do any wrong.
+∞
Who says I don’t? I could barely bring myself to vote for Bush both times.
I am a Conservative. Haven’t seen one of those in the Oval Office since The Great Ronald Reagan.
The Bushes were nearly as bad as Clinton and Obama.
Sure. Another Republican who never really liked Bush. Right.
The great Ronald Reagan raised taxes ,hmmmm what a crazy idea
+1
Reagan? You mean the guy who single-handedly destroyed “The American Way,” and allowed TV to lie to Americans for the first time? Yeah, he was a weiner – and let’s not forget he’s the one that sold arms to our enemies (It’s called TREASON), and bargained with them to hold American Hostages until after he was elected. What a scumbag!
Wake up Apple heads
Don’t you see that they sent in the bigots to disrupt your heads and stir up shit in MDN where they just spout hate and poison and talk shit because they don’t have a clue about anything that has finesse, or excellence, or genius, or class. They can’t stand to compliment, when due, or respect and revere and give due when they see it, they never do because they think it excludes them, so they hate.
MDN is a site that has become a national enquirer of sorts since it welcomed the tp mentality (and may have even encouraged it,) but when controversy attracts readers (amongst them anal-ists who come here to gauge Apple user sentiment) just because it’s frothing with controversy and it’s a place to spew, in almost every reader feedback …the impression that MDN Appleheads give the un Apple scanning visitor, has nothing to do with Apple. It is a mirror of the poisonous bi partisan political ramble that is destroying the fabric of this great country and it is all that’s alive and sick in an opportunistic Apple news website and is probably directly affecting analist sentiment and fanning the flames of Apple haters….
Think this might have anything to do with the fabricated, unfounded and mean spirited attacks on Apple since it’s last, unheard of, record shattering, world record earnings???
Think the biggots are here deliberately as tools, or have they managed to do what Samsung and Google and Microsoft and the Telcos, etc… haven’t to date? Is this what they’ve reduced MDN and Apple to?
Tink Diffrent
Fwhatever, you just can’t stick to your commitment to keep the politics out of this forum, can you? Take that stuff somewhere else. We have heard everything that you have to say about your viewpoint on politics. We do not need reruns.
I deleted a lot of things that I wanted to say about you. That is called discretion. Try it.
If to make your point you need to lie by attaching Bush’s spending to Obama, then your not making your point. Obama’s budgets don’t start till Jan 1 2010. If your just to ignorant to know how budgets work then you should just shut up especially on unrelated forums.
Was logged out…now I ain’t:
Wake up Apple heads
Don’t you see that they sent in the bigots to disrupt your heads and stir up shit in MDN where they just spout hate and poison and talk shit because they don’t have a clue about anything that has finesse, or excellence, or genius, or class. They can’t stand to compliment, when due, or respect and revere and give due when they see it, they never do because they think it excludes them, so they hate.
MDN is a site that has become a national enquirer of sorts since it welcomed the tp mentality (and may have even encouraged it,) but when controversy attracts readers (amongst them anal-ists who come here to gauge Apple user sentiment) just because it’s frothing with controversy and it’s a place to spew, in almost every reader feedback …the impression that MDN Appleheads give the un Apple scanning visitor, has nothing to do with Apple. It is a mirror of the poisonous bi partisan political ramble that is destroying the fabric of this great country and it is all that’s alive and sick in an opportunistic Apple news website and is probably directly affecting analist sentiment and fanning the flames of Apple haters….
Think this might have anything to do with the fabricated, unfounded and mean spirited attacks on Apple since it’s last (previous) unheard of, record shattering, world record earnings???
Think the biggots are here deliberately as tools, or have they managed to do what Samsung and Google and Microsoft and the Telcos, etc… haven’t to date? Is this what they’ve reduced MDN and Apple to?
Tink Diffrent
@2014
Your example of “perception is everything” is certainly pertinent, but the next time don’t hold back; tell us how you REALLY feel about The One.
So you’re actually commenting on every politician in Wahington. Our problem in the US isn’t just any party, it’s the whole political process. Too much money, back handed deals, special interests, corporations, lobbyists, etc actually govern us.
For me, I do not trust any politician as they are paid too much (and for the rest of their lives), get the best healthcare(they all should be on Medicare), and are concerned about their money making prospects after “serving the American people”. It’s time to start over and remove $$$ from politics and let the people decide for themselves instead of a bunch of greedy, lying, backstabbing democrats and republicans.
For the last 160 years we have done nothing but move backwards. Only by luck did we end up as a super power after WWII and we have already lost that status.
I agree, to a point, but they are not all bad.
Take a dispassionate look at U.S. Representative Paul Ryan. He is a real, quality American patriot. Not very single point in his ideas or plans are perfect – nobody’s are, but he’s far, far better than most in D.C.
We need many more like him and many fewer of the types you describe.
http://paulryan.house.gov
A real Cretin you mean. Paul Ryan, his son Rand, Michele Bachmann and Dennis Kucinich , serve their whole careers without doing anything, because of their extreme bat shit view of the world.
But Dennis Kucinich is a Dem… how can that be?
Don’t too get happy he’s out numbered 3 to 1.
Paul Ryan does not have a son named Rand.
You’re “thinking” of Ron Paul, low information voter.
Not as low information as the T-Bagging Paul and Mitt who couldn’t find Nate Silver’s web site, but on the other hand ‘Orca’ worked so well. Ha..Ha..
At least the current one has a brain
First you are ignorant and delusional. Spread your poison among other fools like yourself. Jackass.
You were doing pretty well before you decided to bring what is little more than your opinion about our current president into things.
And by the way, I thought that you merely needed to be an American of a certain age to be president.
I didn’t vote for Obamanation, but tire of the Obama disinformation. There are plenty of issues people of whatever political bent can have with his performance, but what you have ranted is complete nonsense.
Columbia Grad
Harvard Law Grad
Law Review Editor- peer and faculty vote on this.
University of Chicago Professor of Constitutional Law
Illinois State Senator
United States Senator
2x Elected President of the United States
and Community Organizer
The last guy’s resume: failed at an oil company, ran a Baseball Team and kicked his coke habit. Not so sure about the fire water.
One was from the lucky sperm club and the other earned it, yet you rant about an American success story.
And whom might that be? I know you’re a recast. It’s okay. You’re going to have a difficult time soon, when angry white guys like yourself are the minority. Oh, and I hope us progressives take the country down the drain, as long as you’re with us. We call it, “taking one for the team”.
So, what qualification do you need to be president?
35 years old, born in the United States, no felonies.
So what qualification do you need to be a neocon asshole?
No brain, big mouth, ideological dogma, no proof that anything you say is true.
I’d call it a wash.
I just think it’s humorous that he has to continually change his handle. I think I’ll register “First 2016, Then 2018” just to piss him off.
Then take “First Alabama, Then Mississippi”
About sums it up.
It’s amazing people give a fuk about your neurosis enough to reply. I guess it takes more than one to cray cray.
but god damn, it has to be a fact that you are a weird looking little man with a giant pile of issues. If you weren’t those things you’d actually have a life and this wouldn’t be your main source of attention seeking. But yet, here we are.
Now is the opportunity for Apple to ramp up it’s buyback program and reduce its liabilities.
Screw ’em all to the wall! Take it private, Tim.
And when will Tim Cook, as CEO, make a public statement regarding AAPL as a stock play vs the strength of Apple as a company and its products? Seems like all the news about Apple is generated by Wall Street machinations. It’s time for someone at Apple to voice the disconnect of Apple, the company, from AAPL, the stock (and Walls Street’s favorite tool to play up and down runs).
Steve Jobs already said it. Apple shall focus on products and not trying to please speculators of the market.
Ps. You can never please market speculators for long, only for the current profit squeeze.
Just a thought.
The high stock price means the spread is always .08 to .20. That is prime territory for the black box trades scrapping pennies per trade. Th options trades also like the high price. Only equity doing more volume in options is the S&P 500 Index. 10 for 1 split would bring the spread to a penny and reduce the attractive of the options speculators. Yes Mutual funds and the hedgies have their investment, but the stock is no longer controlled by investors – it is a a battleground for the black boxes and option trades. My recommendations would be to split the stock to make it attractive to retail investors, feds impose a financial transactions tax on transactions, if the Europeans do, increase the yield to 3.5% in March and increase the buyback to reduce shares by 5% a year. Right now the buyback is to offset new issuance for employee stock programs. IBM buys back to reduce share count and enhance EPS. Smoke and mirrors, but it helps. IBM growing slower and PE is a lot higher.
While it might be “nice” for the public to hear such sentiments, it would be erroneous for Apple to engage in such a practice. This is why Steve Jobs reiterated Apple will focus on the product, this is why Tim Cook articulates the same message.
While Tim has expressed his personal thoughts more openly than Steve did, I don’t think we will hear a whole lot more. Tim knows how to play the game, and I’m sure he will not be yielding to their will.
I understand your notion, however I think it would create further problems, especially with the media who would see it as carte blanche to trash Apple wholesale. Trashing Apple sells, and obviously profits come before anything else.
There are American finical institutions on and around Wall Street who see profit before patriotism and as much as they like to promote themselves as American as Apple Pie and drape themselves in “Old Glory”, they continue to sell the country out in the name of profits.
It’s not new, it’s not a revelation but profits trump all other ideology.
I agree sparks… as an investor & customer, these are worrying times with the stock price tanking & management’s guidance for basically flat earnings growth for Q1 & Q2. I’m keeping the faith, but it would be nice for apple to provide some hope amid the constant barrage of negativity flowing from the mainstream media.
I think that Apple has plenty of reserve cash to do a lot better than it has in terms of earning profits. Use some of that cash to bring in revenue from something other than hardware. Apple should easily be able to set up its own Netflix-type content business for iOS users. Apple has an awful lot of credit card holders at its fingertips.
Ironic how the “free-market”, “pro-capitalism”, “government can’t do anything right”, “government regulation and uncertainty is killing business” – types now want the SEC to step in and do something. It’s now obvious that Apple stock has been manipulated for a couple of years, but that’s no reason for better government oversight and regulation of the markets and financial industry now, is it? 😉
+10
I was just thinking the same thing. However, in fairness to the reactionary Republicans on this forum, the Democrats are pretty much equally to blame. Bill Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, and their support of truly meaningful reforms in 2010 was pretty weak. In an era when something like 40% of all the economic activity in United States is derived from financial services, that industry pretty much has everybody in their pocket.
Al Gore did.
This made my 100 share sale look odd just seconds before the massive dump. I’d like to see the SEC look into this as well as AL Gore’s strange option exercise just before earnings the other day.
You actually sold????? I bought.
First 2014 , I was like you, lying to myself, trying to justify a Republican position that has no bases in the real world.
Today, Honey Boo Boo is a top rated show because it speaks to a majority of Americans who just kicked our asses in 2012. As far as 2014 or 2016 good luck, it will only get worse.
What I say to Fox News is this, They won, we lost, get the f@ck over it!!
The SEC is only doing what the 1% want look the other way, Jamie Dimon, Icahn and Mitt Romney are getting what they want no enforcement, and congress tie up in knots, shorting stocks, and derivatives should be illegal like wash trading. but where is the support to make that happen anywhere the average person out there, not part of the 1% should want such a law. Where are the so called free market people on this (Amazon, Netflix, and sales force are utter jokes).
The attributed author (Tyler Durden) is the main character’s name in the movie ‘Fight Club’. Please double/triple check this story.
None, Tyler Durden is the byline on most articles on the Zero Hedge blog. The theory is that Zero Hedge stories are really written by a corps of intelligent, funny, and usually pissed off financial folks who prefer not to attach their names to the articles so as not to endanger they main jobs. Hence they came up with the byline Tyler Durden.
Nice to see MDN quoting a financial news source (Zero Hedge) that tries to turn over as many financial rocks as possible so we can all see the cockroaches inhabiting Wall Street.
Intelligent, funny, and usually pissed off financial folks, but not above trying to manipulate markets for their own gain. The stories are always oriented toward the Debbie Downer position. Your comment has a heroicizing tone to it which is not appropriate to this situation.
Who’s worried? If Apple can withstand the death of Steve Jobs Apple can handle anything, right? Apple sells the best anything that anyone can buy, right? Apple’s the most innovative company that ever existed, right? Apple’s the most righteous organization in business, right? Apple stores sells more per square foot than anyone in the universe, right? Who’s worried?
Call me crazy but perhaps this is a next step in the marketing strategy of an Apple rival?
How much would intentionally devaluing Apple stock In this way cost?
Would it fit into a $1 billion Microsoft “marketing” budget? How about the nearly $12 billion budget Samsung allocates to marketing?
Gkmac, probably not a great strategy for anyone to follow but it could be done.
If someone wanted to dump the stock price (absolute end of day is the time to do it) and had purchased at $500/share earlier in the week. The Friday dump would have cost (purchased price – selling price) about $45.3 M. I am sure there are a bunch of high-stakes players around the world who could absorb that cost for a specific goal without flinching. Most companies doing so would need to disclose the details to some government at some point, however.
Can anyone explain to me how Apple’s stock price actually affects its daily operations? I’m actually being serious. It seems that being publicly traded has always been a huge inconvenience for Apple. If I buy stock, someone else, perhaps you, is making or losing money, not Apple, right? Apple makes money if I buy an Apple product, not if I buy stock. Am I wrong?
TS, the stock price doesn’t really affect the day-to-day operations of the company. Many (most?) public companies use stock options as a means to attract top-level employees and to hold onto those same employees. Therefore, the stock price can affect the operations of the company in a non-direct way, from time-to-time.
I bet it impacts employee morale and recruiting. If you are going to work for a company with no growth in the stock and stock options are a benefit., you might be looking for another job. Also, it is a huge retention tool for the execs. I bet board member Robert Iger is pi$$ed he bought in recently in the high 500’s as well as Al Gore who exercised stock option but apparently didn’t sell any of the shares. Guess he though the PX was too low. Masfiled and Cue cased out a buch at around $600 when the stock was on its way down. However, they still have plenty. Likely were diversifying.
Stock options carry an expiration date, so at expiration you must either purchase at the option price or “same day sale” wherein you “buy” them and sell them at the same time. We don’t know the expiration date of Al Gore’s options, but he was probably just prudently turning options into owned shares.
I am sorry. I made a mistake and cleared out my entire account of 800,000 AAPL at the last minute. I just wanted to make the stock more available for you guys. Enjoy the low prices while you can get it.
Hmmm… Didn’t you say the same comment about “the low prices while you can get it” when the share price was $600? You do realize that Apple is now only a stone’s throw from $400 and may reach that Monday morning. Apple could lose $50 a day in share price and nobody but Apple shareholders would even care or notice because nearly every other money-making stock (and a few that aren’t) in the market are rising to new highs.
You are right and I was wrong. I didn’t count on such a poor reaction by the markets for Apple not stunning them will more than record profits.
Al trading activity should be public information. We should be able to see who is responsible for what order flow.
How does the fact that a stock market exists actually make sense?
Hey, Obama appointed Mary Jo White to head the SEC, and he says she’s a rough and tough little critter, She’s prosecuted mobsters and terrorists, and their ain’t nobody meaner. The fact that she’s spent the last ten years in private practice defending the banks against the SEC has no bearing on the matter, of course.
That’s mine….
Why anyone would want…
My guesses:
1) Stupidity.
2) Rich 1%er wants to deliberately DAMAGE Apple and make it as lousy and hateful as every other current biznizz on Wall Street. But that’s redundant of #1 above.
3) Samsung. But that’s redundant of both #1 and #2 above. 😆
Possible manipulation? There is one called the “walls of red.” This is done by throwing a large volume of shares into the market at very critical points during the trading cycle. It is usually done at the opening or towards the close. This is done to drag the stock down or boost it up.