3 Minutes and $136 Billion....4.24.13

Short and nasty...phony tweet drops $ 136 Billion out of the S&P in 3 minutes.  Do you think the scammers might have had some massive short positions before they sent this off.  Or even better, short the tweet, Long 2 minutes later to catch the rebound.  This is exactly the scenario from the movie"Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, a movie I've probably seen 20 times.
To compound the nervousness Schwab servers were hacked and shut down for the last 40 minutes of the day...completely removing ANY electronic access to Schwab and the phone lines were backed up for 30 minutes so trading was impossible on any of their 3 platforms unless you had an institutional account.

Here's the action in real time on the advance/decline line. 
Every stock in the NYSE exhibited the exact same pattern...only in dollars.
Sometimes the slow and easy approach of trading the near close and the near open show its advantages.

The much anticipated APPLE results were a mixed bag, leaving a net sour taste in investor's mouths for this morning open, but MSFT is on a run to new short term highs and GE's regaining ground so we may seem some strength and a test of previous highs by month's end. .