Sell Apples, Make Cash

8:16 am (Hawaii). Sold the AAPL position at 358.70 for a 2% (almost) gain over two days. No complaints other than I should've pulled that trigger sooner (yesterday and today). The intra-day lower highs and lower lows (the past couple of hours) convinced me to step out. I'm relieved.

I can breathe a little better rather than wait for the herd to stampede out, though some of them already did above 359. I reserve the right to re-enter later today, maybe around 355-356. Could happen after that mad dash from 356 to 359 (and later 360). Not really expecting a drop today, though. Just wanted to lock in a decent profit, especially since I might fall asleep. These all-nighters are only fun with a profit in the pocket.

Update, 8:58 am (Hawaii). Got out in the nick of time. A few minutes after my sell, AAPL began to cascade over a major cliff. Most AAPL fans knew it was due for a selloff, but it went from 358 to 348 in a span of 17 minutes or so. This is exactly why I insist on trading AAPL short-term only at this point. The long-timers who got their shares at 95 or 200 can rest easy; this is basically a blip. But for traders who entered at these levels (I entered on Tuesday just below 352), sitting through a 10-dollar plunge is useless. Not sure how or why volume was so freaking huge to the downside, but it bounced off 348, came back to 354+, and is now settling at 352+.

Cleared out all the stop loss orders along the way, one more reason why I prefer to have a mental stop instead of relying on anything else. Whoever picked up shares this week with plans to hold it to 500 or 1,000, this is a blip, as well. I'd rather get out and see if I can get a cheaper price.

Update, 9:19 am (Hawaii). Should add that if I seem a bit paranoid about stop-loss orders in a momo situation, it's because I've been burned royally in bear raids before (DNDN).

Update, 10:02 am (Hawaii). Still no clear indication of what caused the early afternoon crash of AAPL.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt: Snapshot of an Apple flash crash

Here, the mini-crash puts a dent right through what had been a robust gain (after shares opened to the downside along with the rest of the market). I lucked out and exited just before that at 358.70. 

The two-day chart shows exactly how oddly AAPL behaved while the S&P 500 and NASDAQ went about the afternoon as if nothing happened. 

AAPL still near its all-time high. Retouching 360 is going to be a challenge after a lengthy run. 

Update, 3:02 pm (Hawaii). Kept an eye on AAPL and the Egypt coverage on TV afterhours, but didn't trade a thing. VXX was somewhat interesting, rising about 30¢ to 28.79 AH after Mubarak told his nation that he ain't resigning yet. Just not worth the move with contango and the way it hits VXX each morning to the downside regardless of externals.

Market finished flat, basically. APPL finished AH at 354.10, down roughly a buck after a flash-crash-like free-fall (see above).

DIS was barely in the red (43.31 AH) after yesterday's huge jump on great earnings. OPEN, ECA, BIDU, TBT, LULU, HAIN, POT and MOS all 1.3% higher or more. NFLX, AMZN, GLD fractionally higher.

Here's an excellent summary of why hardly anyone showed up at the stores for the new Verizon iPhone 4.

Philip Elmer-DeWitt: Why are the Verizon lines so short? 

As I stalk my shares of AAPL ...

The rest of the market is soaring much higher. Not to be greedy, of course, with a $3+ move since yesterday AH. But I look at my growing watch list and DIS is at the top with a 4.2% gain. Mickey Mouse hasn't been atop a space mountain this high since May, 2000. That's some ride down and back up!

Imagine a Disney longtimer who saw his stock options sag monumentously TWICE in the past 11 years. Getting back to even never felt so good.

Other big gainers today: HAIN (Cramer with a big pump yesterday), AMZN +3.7%, SLV +3.1%, NGD +2.9%, EXK +2.7%, LULU +2.7%, RLOC +1.9%, VCLK +1.8%, TBT +1.8% (go figure), FAS +1.3%), OPEN +1.2%, IBM +1.1%, GLD +1.1%.

AAPL trading afterhours at 354.92 after brief spurt to 355.69. BIDU, F, VZ, GOOG, MOS fractionally higher.

In the red: NFLX -0.1%, POT -1.5%.

As for AAPL, I'm 30% tempted to sell for a nice little profit. I'm 20% cautious about another pre-catalyst bad-news lightning bolt (re: MLK Day/Steve Jobs health issue). If Apple has an overnight bad-news announcement, I won't be shocked. Fortunately, the 50% in me that says, "Let the winner run" is prevailing.

2-day

 2-month

10-year: extreme slope up tempts shorts, but 76% growth is monstrous

Rip Van Aloha

I wake up at 8:30 on this sunny Thursday morning to find myself off center. Feet not quite on the ground. Still transporting from a world where I did an all-nighter, worked on work-related stuff for nearly 48 consecutive hours (my choice of course) and then finally crashed out for the past nine hours. The only thing I heard about Egypt was via The Fly, who noted that shit was hitting the fan in Egypt last night.

Just catching up a little here. Looks like VXX ran up some to 31.25 early in the day, but pulled back and is hovering at 30.35 or so. I'm slightly negatoid with a tiny position there. Not sure I would've sold at 31+ though. That's how small the position is. Market is generally flat. Hardly a thing moving until the past few minutes as Bernanke talks about how QE2 is not the reason for rising inflation overseas. After ignoring the market for half a year, this is the first time I've seen him talk in awhile. He seems a bit defensive and much less confident, imho. Not the same guy I remember from a year or two ago.

AAPL's range today, 338.55 to 343.92 is interesting. Now at 343.43. Still a lot of buyers even in this skittish environment. NFLX back in the green (211.64). So is F (15.61). But FAZ (+1.5%), GLD (+1.2%), QID (+0.3%) and TBT (+0.8%) are all up.

It was a good morning to catch up on sleep.

Update, 10:09 am (Hawaii time). Stopped out of my little VXX position. Why bother with such a tiny position (loss was 1/10th of 1%)? In a peculiar way, it keeps me interested, more than I probably would be with no skin in at all. It wasn't bad. If it was a sizable position, I would've stayed up and sold above 31. Here below 30, no point.

Bernanke has spoken. Markets will be robust for a few more months and as we get closer to July 1, it all shrivels up and turns to dust. Something like that.

Mild Monday

So far, so mild. Good sleeping weather here, 65 degrees and blue skies. Even with an early (for me) bedtime, I missed the first three hours of the market. Egpyt? Bah. No biggie, says the market. Global selloff to start the week? The Dow, S&P and Nasdaq didn't blink. All three are fractionally up.

AAPL has made a run in the past hour or so from 334 to 339, a pleasant surprise. I got out last week, so I'm just waiting for a re-entry point. It appears 334-335 is new support.

As for VXX, I got out with a tiny loss in the mid-31 area. It's so typical of me to have such a modest position and yet all I could think of for most of the weekend was Egypt and VXX. The market often thinks one or two steps ahead. Unless that situation erupts into a shutdown of the Suez Canal, the street gatherings and protests are built into the US market already.

I was expecting a red day, but AAPL, BIDU, FAS, GLD, IBM, TBT are green. NFLX is finally selling off, down 1.8% (214). F is down 1.2% (16.06). GOOG and AMZN down slightly. LULU also. TVIX, which was up more than 20% on Friday, is down 2.4%, so net-net, it's still up big the past two days. I'm staying out of that, VXX and most everything else. The only issues I'll touch are AAPL and maybe GLD and VXX.

Friday frenzy?

It's 4:35 a.m. in Hawaii and my screen probably looks a lot like yours: Everything is pretty much green. AAPL, which touched 330 yesterday before closing at 332 — the level I liked 10 or so days ago, but chose to not buy at — is moving up on massive early volume. It's only a few minutes in, but shares are over 334.

The bounce off 330 has been fairly notable, but whether this sticks, nobody really knows. All I can surmise with a guess is that share price will fluctuate for days, perhaps weeks. That's how AAPL rolls after earnings reports. Roll it shall.

Update, 6:48 a.m. AAPL back to 330+. Predictable enough on options exiry. Now 329.87 and there go the stop-loss orders. I'm 100% cash, not touching any Apples today.

Update, 12:57 p.m. Slept nice this morning, woke up to find a lot of red bleeding in the market. I can view it without the emotional tangle since going flat the other day, down 1% for the year based on a whopping single round-trip trade on AAPL. But to see that many other traders are down 3%, 8%, even 10% already is a bit disheartening. It's also not entirely unexpected. All the bulls were at the front of the ship and it was tipping over, even as I jumped on board last week. I hope every escapes unscathed, but the market has no mercy. Stick your finger in and your entire arm can be taken unless extreme caution to exercised.

AAPL closed at 326.66, roughly 8.7% down since its afterhours high of 357 earlier this week. A 10% haircut would bring it down to 322 or so. A 20% chomp would bring AAPL down to 285. I don't see a fall below the latter number — 1) Fundamentals are too strong, and 2) President Obama needs to gain public approval in this third year of his term.

With Nasdaq down (-0.41%), AAPL slipped 1.83% on slightly higher volume. GOOG fell 2.5% to 611 after a huge runup. It was at 640 before I crashed out this morning.

The issues I watched more closely today, stuff that may work fairly well in a choppy market, were a mixed bag. TBT dropped 1.3% while TLT (its opposite, more or less) gained 0.76%. VXX gained 1.79 percent, which surprised me. When the market sold off some yesterday, VXX was in the red. There's more negativity in the market now and I missed the VXX ride today.

The hottest momo rockets continued to fizzle. RLOC (-5.1%), LULU (-0.5%), NFLX (-1.9%).

Another weird turn was FAS (+1.9%). Finnies were hot, which kept the Dow Jones green. C (+1.5%) and JPM (+1.1%) did quite nice. GS, not so much (+0.3%).

A mega winner was ISRG (+12.7%) on more than six times normal volume after earnings. GE hit one out, too (+7.1%) with good earnings, and DIS was rolling (+1.5%) while AMZN ate dirt (-2.7%).

This is the kind of action that whipsaws those of us with a penchant to go all in (or close to it), those of us who react to defeat by reaching in and going double in. Don't do it, people! Step away, let the market do its thing, which right now is eating its own vomit. If you must re-enter, do it one bit at a time. Give it a chance to get back on its feet. Otherwise, you're betting on home runs while the market is dealing with tremors.

Thumpdown Thursday

It was just a couple of years ago, maybe 18 months, when an old friend bought some GOOG at 432. He was satisfied until the market sold off in a major correction and his shares sank 100 bucks or so. He held on. He was rewarded. GOOG is trading at 644 afterhours thanks to a robust earnings report, up 2.75% from the close (626). Quite a run, but will it top out like AAPL? Apple lost its CEO (temporarily?), Steve Jobs, due to medical issues. GOOG just announced that CEO Eric Schmidt is changing positions. He tweeted that "adult supervision is no longer needed."

If I were a GOOG shareholder, I'd tweet, "WTF???"

I slept marvelously through today's market, catching only the first 30 minutes or so. AAPL declined to 330 before bouncing to 332. Those round numbers, 350, 340, 330 ... they play with trader psychology, no question. StockGuy22 has always noted that. He's right.

My hunch that VXX would benefit from an AAPL pullback (1.8%) was wrong. VXX is down (-1%) in a market absent chaos and complete unpredictability. VXX clearly does well when there are riots on the streets of Greece or when North Korea sends missiles into the air. But here, VXX is hemmed in by a quiet global environment, so I'm exploring other issues.

ETFs on an upswing in a down market today: TBT (+2.6%), DPK (+2.3%), EDZ (+3.1%), EEV (+2.2%), FXP (+3.1%), LHB (+3.8%), SMN (+2.7%), TZA (+3.1%).

Others up today: FSLR (+2.6%), STP (2%), SOLR (+4.3%), V (+2.3%), MMR (+5.9%)

The hardest hit today were also some of the hottest risers: NFLX (-3.1%), AMZN (-2.6%), POT (-3%), VMW (-3.8%), NILE (3.2%), NTDOY (-5.3%), BIDU (1.5%), CRM (-6.4%), FWLT (3.5%), SNDK (-3%), YUM (-1.3%), JOYG (-3.7%), QCOM (-1.5%), ANSS (-5.1%), AKAM (-2.3%), GIGM (-3.5), TQNT (-4.3%), RHT (-5%), UA (-2%), RAX (-10.9%), SLV (-4.4%), GLD (-1.9%)

Most of these stocks were due for a pullback, just like AAPL.

The threat of rising interest rates could simultaneously dent both the stock and bond markets. Taking a very close look at TBT tomorrow.

Some of the steady risers didn't sell off much, if at all today: F (-0.7%), IMAX (+0.6%), C (+0.8%).

Good to be in cash. Better to be flexible and stay one step ahead, or in my case, off the field and on the sidelines.