Apple went from its 8th highest close to its 19th in one day

• Apple puts and calls top Monday's crazy options trading

  Strike prices range from $335 to $400 as traders scramble to deal with a market in free fall

  A hedge-fund trader hoping to make some quick money in Apple (AAPL) weekly options would be hard-pressed to make sense of the chart at right, a snapshot of  thinkorswim.com's AAPL options board taken at 10:30 a.m. Monday morning.

  The bottom two graphs show open interest in Apple weekly calls (left) and puts (right) as of MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Aug 8, 2011 11:35 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Bank of America, CitiBank, General Electric, Hedge fund, Investing, Max pain, Options, Standard & Poors, Weeklys

• Apple flirts with $400

  Resistance was high, but the stock still managed to record a 34-year high

  Apple (AAPL) closed at $398.50, up

  $5.20 (1.32%) for the day
  $83.18 (26.4%) since June 20
  $79.94 (23.5%) for the year and
  $139.22 (53.7%) year over year.

  Barrons' Tiernan Ray notes that the stock hit $400 twice during the day, once shortly before 1:00 p.m. EDT and then again at 2:25.

  Judging from the open interest in Apple weekly calls and puts, Max Pain MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jul 25, 2011 4:35 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Max pain, Stock price, Wall Street

• The maximum pain of Apple weekly options: One year later

  In 52 weeks, Apple shares closed within $1 of the so-called Max Pain range 39 times

  To ordinary investors, the trading in Apple (AAPL) shares last week must have looked a little crazy. On Monday, when the Dow was up, the stock fell, only to shoot up $9.98 (3.17%) the next day. On Thursday, when the Dow was down, the stock was up $8.62 (2.67%). If Apple could have held on MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 25, 2011 8:12 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Chicago Board Options Exchange, Market maker, Max pain, Options, Strike price, Trading strategy, Travis Lewis, Weekly options, Weeklys

• Who knifed AAPL?

  With the Dow up and no negative news on the wire, the stock fell off a cliff Thursday

  Thursday was another one of those bizarre trading days for Apple (AAPL). The stock opened higher, flirted with some prices north of $328 in the morning and made it through the early afternoon without suffering much damage, despite the turmoil in Greece.

  Then, at about 1:50 p.m., the volume jumped and the stock fell MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jun 16, 2011 3:43 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Investing, Max pain, Options, Stock, Weekly options

• What Foxconn's blast did to Apple's Max Pain price

  A case study in how the options market reacts to breaking news

  We've written a lot lately about how traders buying and selling options seem to be driving Apple's (AAPL) share price (see here, here and here.) So we thought it might be instructive to look at what happened on a day when Apple's share price took over and drove the options market -- specifically, the so-called Max Pain price point MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 23, 2011 9:00 AM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Chengdu, China, Financials, Foxconn, iPad, Max pain, Mick Blackledge, Options, Tablets

• Is Apple's share price being manipulated?

  There's something very fishy about the weekly options market. Is it time to reel in the bad guys?

  It was 3:48 p.m. on Friday April 29 and traders who had purchased Apple (AAPL) April 29 $350 "calls" -- options that gave them the right to buy Apple shares in blocks of 100 for $350 per share -- were sitting pretty. The stock was trading around $353.50 and those calls were worth MORE

  Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 12, 2011 1:00 PM ET
  Posted in: Apple, Calls, Financials, Manipulation, Max pain, Options, Pinning, Puts, Share price, Stock, Strike price, Trade