What An AAPL Day!- An Overview of The Trading Range

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 10, 4:09AM EST

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By Yaser Anwar, CSC of Equity Investment Ideas

What I really liked about AAPL’s trading pattern is the volatility. It didn’t just shoot up straight, the trading was so erratic and volatile with so many chances to enter and exit, damn, it was a day/swing traders dream trade. Every trader I know, professional and individual (like myself) made lots of money on it.

I will admit, I was selling into the strength during the morning. During 12pm there where times AAPL saw red ink too! If a trader had missed the entry they could have gone in then and bought the float. Once I saw it turn red I did buy a few Jan 95 calls & some stock.

Then during 330ish pm the stock was up just 2 bucks at 88 and change thanks to the selling at day trading firms such as Swift Trade and other prop firms that don’t hold overnight positions. Another time to go in and buy to sell at the close. In 10-15 mins, by 345ish the stock was back up at 92, another quick trade.

There were many times during the day when I didn’t enter like I wanted to but thanks to the volatility and today’s AAPL trading range, traders were presented plenty of opportunities to go in and out. Also, today I realized it pays to have two accounts. I’ve got one account which has a few thousand $s for long term plays but the majority of my $$ is in a trading account for short term ops (as you know the only way to learn trading is by doing it, especially since I plan to be a trader). I had bought some AAPL between 83 and 88 for the long term account, with an average price of 85ish, which I don’t plan to sell till the stock crosses par.

To be honest, I was tempted many times during the day to just "buy calls blindly" especially after they announced the iPhone. I’m quite sure I would have made money but I’m glad I didn’t do so. Why? Sure today the trade would have worked, but what about the next time? Sooner or later the market would have caught me on the wrong side and flushed me out. Hence, I’m glad I stayed disciplined and didn’t get overly greedy by buying calls at the height.

So what if you missed it? With a few ups and downs, the stock is still going a lot higher. I’m going to come up with an analysis ASAP to talk about the iPhone’s potential. I don’t know about you but I’m definitely going to be buying the iPhone, albeit from eBay (Canadian phone providers are the biggest ponzi scheme operators in the world, which makes their stocks so good! i.e. Rogers).

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.