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Zaky on Apple's flash crash

Apple on Thursday suffered a apparently inexplicable drop in its stock price and in less than five minutes dropped some $10 a share. Apple financial analyst Andrew Zaky called the sell-off "not normal."
Written by David Morgenstern, Contributor

Apple on Thursday suffered a apparently inexplicable drop in its stock price and in less than five minutes dropped some $10 a share. Apple financial analyst Andrew Zaky called the sell-off "not normal."

Fortune Tech offered quotes from Zaky about the flash crash. He said the drop wasn't like those resulting from the usual bad news.

"There's something else. The selling was not normal. That's for sure. It wasn't orderly. Take a look for yourself."

Zaky's minute-by-minute chart is here.

Later, on the Seeking Alpha blog, Zaky expanded his comments:

I watched the May flash crash live and can attest that this sell-off was extraordinarily similar in nature to the May sell-off. My initial reaction to this disorderly sell-off was that Steve Jobs must have gotten hit by a bus without a stock halt. Later it was discovered that the selling pressure was attributed to reports of thin crowds in Verizon (VZ) stores during the iPhone launch.

Yet, whatever the reason for sell-off I can attest that the sell-pressure was entirely disorderly. It seems that we still have issues with specialists being unable to keep things afloat ahead of huge orders in the market. The volume spike was enormous as millions upon millions of shares were sold in the scope of 15 minutes.

In his post on the crash, ZDNet's David Gewirtz said the site Stock Tick Toc reported bad news about Steve Jobs.

But another rumor is out there and particularly disturbing. The site Stock Tick Toc is reporting on rumors that Steve Jobs is in the hospital.

I pray for Mr. Jobs' complete healing, but it doesn't figure that this news report would cause the market spike. After all, Jobs announced his medical leave almost 3 weeks ago and surely the market has absorbed the news.

There's something else at work here — some strange, computer trading thing. My guess: whatever caused the flash crash is running on a Windows machine.

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