AAPL got smacked today. It is witching Wednesday, the Wednesday before options expiration. The wild action might have been caused by some folks knowing where various stops might be and pushing the stock to run the stops. With a $500 billion market cap, manipulators only have so much juice, but Apple is also the most popular stock for option traders, and day traders.
Some other thoughts today: I mentioned watching a webinar about John Carter's TTM set of indicators, one of which is a scalper. Looking at various charts, the TTM scalper seemed to call market turns almost every time. Then I read what it actually is, and the balloon deflated. TTM scalper triggers after three periods of trend reversal, ThinkorSwim paints the trigger point back three days. That's why the indicator looks so great on the old charts, it is a hindsight indicator, flashing signals after three days, and then painting the chart three days back. The cliche about reading the manual comes to mind.
I attended another live Schwab seminar. One interesting anecdote from the presenter was that doctors and engineers tend to be his most difficult clients. They tend to be stubborn, and tend to think they know better. Interesting.
I am still operating on a "no crash" in 2012 premise. All my short February options look to be safely out of the money, even with today's minor dip.
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