Apple shares took an inexplicable beating from investors on Monday morning, leading to the stock’s single biggest fall since January 28th, 2014. And no one really know why.
An unusual spike in trading volume this morning sent the price of AAPL shares falling as much as 6.4 percent to $111.27 in early trading this morning, leading to a loss of more than $40 billion in market value in just a few minutes.
The cause for the sudden fall in price is still being debated among the Wall Street crowd, but Reuters reports that an acceleration in the sales of AAPL shares could have sent the stock tumbling. At 9:51AM EST, more than 6.7 million shares were traded in a one-minute stretch – the heaviest single minute of AAPL trading since October 29th.
Traders have pointed to institutions that use automated selling programs as the possible culprit, but High Frequency Trading advocates like Bill Harts at Modern Markets Initiative have said that blaming the drop on HTF is ‘misleading.’ Technology stocks overall have been down today. Twitter fell 5%, LinkedIn dropped 4%, and Facebook slipped 2%. Google is also down as much as one percent.
More than 64 million shares of APPL have been traded as of 2PM EST, making it the most active stock in the U.S. market. Other factors may have contributed to the fall, such as poor Black Friday shopping numbers, plummeting oil prices, or profit taking by investors.
Got your own theory on why Apple shares are suddenly falling? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
