Options

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

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

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

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