Apple Steps to New Highs

Stocks held on to most of their week's gains, which can be taken as either a healthy rest period, buyers' exhaustion or that the bears are more than willing to be sellers at current prices and can feed the pipeline of demand.

Given the relatively low volume and narrow range, I'll say it's a combination of the three, with investors essentially breathing a sigh of relief that today's jobs data did not give another shock to the system.

But for those that are describing this as a move back to a Goldilocks scenario, it seems a little premature when the bears can still point to some, if not all, of the rubble enveloped the markets just a few weeks a ago, showing that the house is far from clean and tidy.

Let's do some options stuff. The VIX finished unchanged at 20.65, but is off some 24% in the past two weeks and is now below its 10-day moving average. A small, not totally reliable sell signal. It probably has more to do with the premiums coming back in line with the real or historical volatility and the fact that aside from next week's FOMC meeting, we are entering a holiday period which has traditionally quiet trading. Of course, it is also supposed to be a period with a bullish bias. So flip a coin.

The big news of the day was that Apple (AAPL - commentary - Cramer's Take) will be opening a second retail store in Manhattan in the Meatpacking district. The area now has little to do with the business for which it was named, unless you consider shops that sell $900 shoes and restaurants with $25 appetizers as butchers.

Anyway, news that Apple's space will be nicely designed and will go so far as to install a staircase allowing customers to get from one floor to the next was enough to send Apple shares up over 2.25% to a new 52-week high of $194.25.

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Steven Smith writes regularly for TheStreet.com. In keeping with TSC's editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. He was a seatholding member of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) from May 1989 to August 1995. During that six-year period, he traded multiple markets for his own personal account and acted as an executing broker for third-party accounts. He appreciates your feedback; click here to send him an email.

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