Apple's $500 Close: It's Not Manipulation!

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- It's so freaking 2011. At least for me it is. But, really, it's timeless.

Anyway, I did not plan on writing another article until Tuesday morning, but somebody must step in to bring clarity to the hysterical inanity that reoccurs regularly regarding Apple (AAPL) and the related options market concepts of maximum pain and pinning.

I covered this -- in depth, in 2011 -- when I wrote for Seeking Alpha. You can find the source articles here and here.

However, I'm going to give you all of the information you need right here at TheStreet to prove that ...

Apple's $500 close has nothing to do with market manipulation so stop with the conspiracy theory nonsense and learn something! A small subset of readers will believe what they want to believe no matter what type of information gets placed in front of them, but remember this is coming from one of Apple's biggest defenders as of late.

It was a shooting star! No, it was a UFO. It was a shooting star! No, it was a UFO. Shoot me now.

The big money is not sitting in a room changing the hands of a clock or rolling back miles on an odometer on Friday afternoon to make sure that, magically, AAPL closes where they want it to be. Sorry.

There's a perfectly logical explanation, illustrated in plain English, as told to me by Neil Pearson, University of Illinois Professor of Finance and Harry A. Brandt Distinguished Professor of Financial Markets and Options, back in May 2011.

I researched the subject and contacted the professor to authoritatively counter the pure crap "opinion" that options traders work together to get AAPL to close wherever they want it to close on options expiration day (which is today).

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