Options
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How the market in Apple 'weeklys' is rigged
If you're looking for evidence of manipulation, Friday's close was picture-perfect
"The easiest way to think of options," wrote The Market Skeptics's Eric deCarbonnel in a prescient 2009 post, "is as a type of insurance. Investors pay a premium to protect themselves against sharp swings in the market. If these sharp swings don't happen, those selling options (option market makers) keep the premiums as profit."
"In a legitimate free market," he continues, "every MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 15, 2011 9:32 AM ETPosted in: Android, Apple, Calls, Derivatives, Eric deCarbonnel, Financial, Google, Investing, Jim Cramer, Jon Stewart, Manipulation, Market maker, Options, Puts, Share price, Steve Jobs, The Daily Show, The Street, Travis Lewis, Weekly options, Weeklys -
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 ETPosted in: Apple, Calls, Financials, Manipulation, Max pain, Options, Pinning, Puts, Share price, Stock, Strike price, Trade -
Apple's sleepiest day of the year
Trading in the company's shares Monday was slower than it's been since New Year's Eve, 2010
Apple (AAPL) has been trading in a narrow band this year -- to the undying frustration of investors who think the stock's price ought to reflect the company's breakneck earnings growth (EPS up 75%, 68%, 75% and 92%, respectively, over the past four quarters).
Apple's trading volume, by contrast, is as changeable as a baby's bottom, MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - May 10, 2011 8:09 AM ETPosted in: AAPL, Apple, Financials, Jim Neal, NASDAQ, Nuance, Options, Share price, Volume, Weekly options -
Al Gore gets 10,387 more Apple options
Serving as a lightning rod for activist shareholders has its rewards
Al Gore took his lumps at Apple's (AAPL) shareholders meeting Thursday.
Sitting in the front row with the other outside directors, he had to bite his tongue as two pro-environment proposals were voted down and a gadfly named Shelton Ehrlich took the mic to call him a "laughingstock."
"The glaciers have not melted," Ehrlich said, referring to Gore's frequent warnings about the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 27, 2010 1:13 PM ET -
Apple selloff: How much did Steve lose?
It may come as some consolation to the investors who lost their shirts as Apple (AAPL) shares collapsed over the past month that nobody lost more, at least on paper, than its CEO.
As the company's largest individual stockholder, with 5,546,451 shares directly owned, Steve Jobs (were he paying attention) could have watched the value of his holdings drop from $1.126 billion just before Christmas to $771 million at Wednesday's close, MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 24, 2008 7:58 AM ET
