Something jammed its blood funnel into Apple's share price last week
"Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression."
So wrote Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi in his 2010 takedown of Goldman Sachs -- the article that famously described the 143-year-old banking house as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
Without ever actually accusing Goldman Sachs (GS) of manipulating Apple (AAPL) shares, Paulo Santos, a independent analyst and trader from Portugal, makes a plausible case that the bizzarre action in Apple last week -- rocketing to a record $526.29 on Wednesday morning only to plummet to as low $486.63 -- can be traced to insider knowledge that Tim Cook was going to speak at a Goldman Sachs conference on Tuesday, which is when Wednesday's run-up began.
It doesn't matter so much what Cook said, Santos argues in a Seeking Alpha piece posted Friday, as when it was known that he would be speaking at all. That news was announced on Monday, accompanied by a small Apple gap up.
"But now we have to wonder," Santos writes, "when did the organizers of that conference have the certainty that Tim Cook would be present and giving his keynote address?" I quote:
Could it have been the Thursday before, where Apple not only gapped up, but traded notable volume as well? Indeed, on the run up to [Wednesday] there were several unnatural peaks in volume, some only comparable to what you see after an earnings release.
So, from the looks of this, what seems most likely to have happened, is that someone accumulated a large Apple position based on the knowledge that he'd have a catalyst to push up the stock price in a few days' time. Once that catalyst arrived the stock was spiked into the close of the market and during the night session where there's little volume. Come the new session, Goldman Sachs reiterated its conviction buy and $600 price target. General euphoria did the rest during the trading session.
There was just one thing missing here. The dump. Right into the euphoria and relentlessly, the shares that were previously accumulated were sold. This is perhaps how you sometimes go an entire quarter without a single losing day.
"Bear in mind that in situations like these," Santos writes in the spirited commentary his post provoked, "it doesn't need to be GS taking the profits, these things can also be used by their customers."
Below: Santos' chart comparing last week's volumes and gaps to the action following Apple's Jan 24 earnings release.
Click to enlarge. Source: Paul Santos
A lesson in access journalism in the wake of the New York Times' Foxconn series
"An Apple spokesman said no executives were available to comment."
That sentence, appearing 12 paragraphs into a 14-graph story by Brian X. Chen in Thursday's New York Times, speaks volumes about how Apple (AAPL) deals with press coverage it doesn't like.
For more than a week, the company had been seeding selected media outlets with early access to its next MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 17, 2012 7:18 AM ET
How the news of the Mac's next operating system -- Mountain Lion -- got disseminated
Source: Techmeme
The top tech news story Thursday, apparently, has nothing to do with working conditions in China, or who owns the iPad brand, or even the fact that Motorola (MMI) may have to remove "slide to unlock" from its smartphones.
No, the top 135 stories on Techmeme this afternoon are all about the next version of MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 16, 2012 3:50 PM ET
Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.
"We're starting to do some things differently."
-- Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller (Daring Fireball)
* Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled a new version of the Mac operating system, named "Mountain Lion," with features currently found in the company's mobile software. (The Wall Street Journal)
* Japanese authorities arrested MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Feb 16, 2012 11:49 AM ET
It's not a pressure-cooker environment that is the problem, but boredom and alienation
Foxconn workers. Source: Everything iCafe
"The facilities are first-class; the physical conditions are way, way above average of the norm."
That's Auret van Heerden, president of the Fair Labor Association, speaking to Reuters after an initial visit to the Foxconn factory where Apple's (AAPL) iPads are built.
Apple has been hit with a barrage of criticism over the working conditions in MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 15, 2012 2:58 PM ET
Fortune's curated selection of tech stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up to get the round-up delivered to you each and every day.
* Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco yesterday, addressing topics like working conditions in Chinese Foxconn factories, the runaway successes of the iPhone and iPad, and emerging markets. Cook also revealed there are now 100 million iCloud users -- 15 MORE
JP Mangalindan, Writer-Reporter - Feb 15, 2012 8:26 AM ET
The man who took over from Steve Jobs makes a rare public appearance
In a much anticipated follow-up on the 2008 Q&A that helped seal his reputation with investors (see here), Tim Cook takes questions at a Goldman Sachs technology conference.
Apple (AAPL) is providing a live streaming audio webcast here. [Transcript here.] We're going to assume you are listening in real time or catching the event after the fact, and will MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 14, 2012 3:29 PM ET
Scheduled to make a rare appearance at a Goldman Sachs technology conference
Click for the audio webcast.
It's been nearly four years since Tim Cook, then Apple's (AAPL) chief operating officer, appeared at a Goldman Sachs investors symposium to answer the urgent questions that had been piling up all winter.
The stock had fallen more than $80 a share -- to below $120 -- in the space of a month and the MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 13, 2012 5:23 PM ET
The hardware is the easy part. The trick is to get Hollywood on board
"Apple enters markets to reinvent them," wrote Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster in a note to clients Tuesday reiterating his oft-repeated conviction that Apple's (AAPL) next big thing is an Apple-branded television set.
To be sure, Munster has scaled back his expectations since he predicted that the company would sell 6.6 million Apple TV set-top boxes in 2009 and MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Feb 1, 2012 7:02 AM ET
Tim Cook taps John Browett, CEO of Dixons, to head his retail empire
Johnson and Browett
Ron Johnson, the former Target (TGT) whiz kid who built more than 300 Apple Stores for Steve Jobs, left a gaping hole in Apple's (AAPL) management team when he departed last year to run J.C. Penney (JCP). During his seven and a half years with the company, Johnson's stores became Apple's public face -- clean, MORE
Philip Elmer-DeWitt - Jan 31, 2012 8:07 AM ETEvery morning, discover the companies, deals and trends in tech that are moving markets and making headlines. SUBSCRIBE
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| Company | Price | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bank of America Corp... | 7.95 | -0.16 | -1.97% |
| Microsoft Corp | 31.27 | -0.17 | -0.54% |
| Ford Motor Co | 12.28 | -0.25 | -2.00% |
| General Electric Co | 19.39 | 0.17 | 0.88% |
| Citigroup Inc | 32.36 | -1.00 | -3.00% |
| Index | Last | Change | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dow | 12,938.67 | -27.02 | -0.21% |
| Nasdaq | 2,933.17 | -15.40 | -0.52% |
| S&P 500 | 1,357.66 | -4.55 | -0.33% |
| Treasuries | 2.00 | -0.04 | -1.96% |
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