Do Not Be Influenced by AAPL

Some may see the 4% drop in AAPL today and extrapolate that to future equity index weakness.  But I would caution against making that quick assumption.  For most of 2013, AAPL was a laggard while the S&P ripped higher and higher.  I also would ignore the too high, too fast theory.  That may have applied when we hit 1980 in July, but we've had the scary pullback, and the V recovery.  The market has mostly gone sideways for the past 2 months, although with a slight upward bias.

Fundamentally, there is still the QE catalyst from the ECB, probably set for December, and the Fed will not be doing anything for the rest of the year.  There are no bear catalysts right now, and the price action is quite bullish, with bulls preventing any big dips from happening.  Also, there is a healthy skepticism on down days, as even though we barely went down today, put/call ratios were fairly high.  

Seasonally, now till mid October is bearish, but that doesn't guarantee weakness, as we've seen plenty of strong Septembers and Octobers.  I am not going to ride the bubble, but I will be opportunistic in buying dips for quick trades.  Eventually we will top out, and I probably won't be able to catch the top for a short, but I don't want to get squeezed out on a short just because valuations are high.