“Apple shares, which had climbed nearly 80 points to more than $270 in the three months since Steve Jobs introduced the iPad, briefly lost it all in Thursday’s wild trading,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“In the space of 20 minutes, between 2:35 and 2:55 p.m. EDT, it plummeted from nearly $248 a share to $199.25, before bouncing back at high volume to where it started,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Elmer-DeWitt reports, “Apple, which closed Wednesday at $255.99, ended Thursday at $246.25, down $9.74 (3.8%) for the day.”
Full article, in which P.E.D. reports other stock charts also traced similar canyons, here.
TheStreet reports on what their professionals in RealMoney Columnist Conversation were saying during the massive selloff Thursday afternoon. Some snippets:
• Scott Rothbort: This will be like Casablanca. The Congress will round up the usual suspects — like Goldman Sachs.
• Alan Farley: It looked like the market-making system itself failed today. That’s a major subset of the algorithms. For once, I agree with Scott, this selloff was NOT kosher. Even in 2007 and 2008, the “orderliness” was light years ahead of what we just witnessed.
• Rev Shark: So when does the congressional hearing on computerized trading begin? That was just a breathtaking move, and there is no way that the action was not accelerated, or even created by program trading. This is the sort of stuff that has kept the individual investor out of this market during the rally over the past year. They were killed in 2008 and never regained any trust, and now we have this glaring example of machine manipulation to make sure they never do come back.
Full article here.
CNBC reports, “In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses in what possibly could have been a trader error.”
“According to multiple sources, a trader entered a ‘b’ for billion instead of an ‘m’ for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow,” CNBC reports. “(CNBC’s Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff.)”
“Sources tell CNBC the firm in question that handled the erroneous trade is Citigroup,” CNBC reports. “The bank said it has no evidence of a bad trade but is investigating the situation.”
CNBC reports, “The massive selloff, which began shortly after 2 pm ET, amplified concerns about the spreading European debt crisis as the approval of austerity measures by the Greek Parliament sparked renewed rioting in Athens. ‘There is simply a growing recognition that Greece has got to default,’ banking analyst Dick Bove told CNBC.com. ‘The riots in the streets showed the decision to repay the debt was not going to be made by the people in Germany, France and Switzerland—it’s going to be made by people in Greece and they’re not going to repay it.'”
CNBC reports, “There also is a growing sense that any collapse of Greece could trigger a wave of defaults across Europe and even the world.”
CNBC reports, “Greece passed a bill in its Parliament after heated debate that calls for unpopular cuts in public spending in pensions and other areas, as well as tax increases. Greece needed to approve the austerity measures to be eligible to receive a $141.9 billion aid package from the International Monetary Fund and the 15 other countries that use the euro.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Anybody pick up any fruit (or automatically drop it) during the fire sale?
Launch the SEC investigation!
Send notices to FTC, FCC and DEA as well.
Ship of fools
This sh?!t is weird.
Some of my stop losses kicked in before bouncing back up.
Not overly happy right now.
Of all the times to have all my money tied up in other declining stocks. Kids, this is why you should always have a little cash on the side. 25% cash is a great asset to have.
That scared the bejabbers out of me, Google has the same dip. What’s going on?????
So much for stop-losses. More like start-losses.
At least they didn’t blame a computer.
I have a healthy fear of falling.
What the hell happened?
Talk about crater..
@ HMCIV
Agreed but didn’t I just read last week or so that the SEC work force themselves are being investigated for watching porn all day when they should have been working?
That person at Citigroup shouldn’t be fired for the mistake though. Instead, cut off thier right and left index fingers so they can’t make that mistake so easily next time.
@ Megame,
Sorry about your “loses”. Last year we did an over the phone order for a “stop”, the person at BofA (vincent) convinced me to do a “limit”. Well, the Stock sold $0.17 early. So I called BofA and after investaging the phone conversation they gave me us our shares back. Good thing they did, the stock went up another 40% for the sell price. The guy apologized for Vincent’s poor advice and said “In 23 years this is only the 3rd time I have ever seen someone get a trade back.” I would hope you were able to buy back in to get some return.
“Anybody pick up any fruit during the fire sale?”
You would have had to been really quick on the trigger. I was watching the live quotes come across and it dipped and rebounded within the span of just a few minutes.
If you had some automatic buying triggers in place you likely got a good deal, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have had either time to call your broker or even log into etrade etc to place an order. It was FAST.
Apparently there were some shenanigans, which is actually good news if you ask me. Means there wasn’t a real reason for it to happen hence the rebound.
“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” — Thomas Sowell
Don’t let Obama and the Libs in congress lead the U.S.A. down into the gutter of entitlements and stagnation like Europe.
This same sort of thing happened to AAPL the day the iPhone was first being introduced. For some strange reason, AAPL dropped significantly for 20 minutes while Steve spoke and triggered my stop losses. I lost a bunch of AAPL stock that day because of a “glitch”. Actually, I think it was more than a “glitch”. I was not a happy camper.
My STOP LOSS kicked in at $245.39 – I was on the road, couldn’t react to what was going on. I am not completely out of AAPL now. Not a bad investment – I bought at $49 in 2004, it split in 2005 2 for 1, so my adjusted price was $24.50/share. I just made 10x in a little under 6 years.
This smells like a cyber attack on the Market.
Jess a ‘lil Windows rounding error …
Socialism is great until you run out of someone else’s money (M. Thatcher)
Wave of defaults, sorry to say it, but the US is next in line in 2-4 years. Debt catches up with you in the long run.
Time to get Flash off the trading computers.
@elocam
who’s money is funding the us deficit? You better pray the chinese don’t run out.
@First 2010, then 2012
The problem is national debt, not internal socioeconomic policies, care to discuss how to bring down the US national debt without riots???
Damn. I wish I had seen today’s graph yesterday at 5pm rather than today.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Where does socialism come into this? Fools. The topic is automated trading. It’s the “advantage” hedge funds have over the rest of us.
Sold all my Apple stock at 11:45 for 255.47, due to fears of falling markets and Greece default.
Watched the market in disbelief. Missed the chance to buy on rebound from below 200. Turns out that due to market error (“B” punched instead of “M”) those trades will be cancelled anyway.
Planning to buy back all Apple stock and more around early July about a week before the 2nd calendar quarter results come out.
The real reason for the dip?
Microsoft backed Apple over Flash. People thought hell was freezing over and the world was coming to an end.