Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Its earnings report and guidance was not strong enough to convince growth investors that the recent move into China is nothing, but something that came too late to make a huge difference. And Carl Icahn is back out swinging against Apple wanting more buybacks.

Icahn now uses Twitter to communicate his messages rapidly, and the latest tweet shows that he just bought $500 million more in Apple stock. He even joked that his buying is the same as the company’s and that he wants the company to win in that race.

Icahn has been pressing for Apple to boost its stock buyback efforts massively. CEO Tim Cook has so far managed to fend off that effort. Unfortunately, Cook is also fending off the temptation to do anything aggressive when it comes to buybacks.

It remains a guess as to what Icahn and Cook will reach for an equilibrium. Having a pre-earnings market cap of almost $500 billion makes it extremely hard for any outsider to get in and make much of a difference when it comes to voting.

Sometimes even billionaires have limits on what they can accomplish. That pertains to Icahn as well.

Apple shares are still down 7.3% (or $40.50) at $510.00, and the 21.3 million shares that had traded as of 11:15 is already basically twice a normal day’s trading volume. Apple traded just under 20 million shares on Monday, going into the earnings report. This is already a record volume day for the past three months.

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