The gentrified hoodlums who manipulate this stock for a living are so brazen about it that they insist on leaving their fingerprints at the scene of each new shakedown.  Every major swoon has trampolined from within inches of a round number that seems to have been pre-determined, if not to say ordained. Thus, on the day of the May 6 Flash Crash,  did a few more-than-merely-lucky souls manage to buy or cover short AAPL shares at 199.25 — $59 below the intraday high!  More  recently, when the same thimble-riggers yanked the rug out on September 28,  producing an instant $17 drop, they created yet another telltale low at exactly 275.00.  And yesterday, when opportunity knocked in the form of bad news for perhaps every stock but Apple, DaBoyz were waiting at 300.02 — down nearly $18 from the previous day’s close — to glom as many shares as they could get their slimy hands on before running the stock back up by nearly $14.

Fortunately, these deftly executed gambits can do little more than annoy us, since the two November 300-310-320 butterfly spreads that we own cost us practically nothing — $20 per — and yield a potential gain of as much as $2000.  In the chat room on Tuesday, I suggested elongating our theoretical profit zone by buying a vertical spread if and when AAPL comes down to a midpoint support at 304.68. But because this would entail legging into a more complex position on the anticipated rally from that number, I wouldn’t attempt it unless you are very experienced at trading options. If I’m in the room when the opportunity arises, I’ll furnish further details. In any event, the 304.68 pivot is a good place to look for a tradable bounce. If AAPL is invincible, as I believe it very nearly is, then any selling in the days ahead should not violate the support.