Social interest on StockTwits has been spectacular to watch this month. Last week, the talk of the town was all about Tesla ($TSLA). In-fact, Tesla seemed poised to overtake Apple as the most talked about stock. But what happened this week? Apple struck back. It closed up 8% while easily exceeding 10,000 messages with Bullish Sentiment hitting new highs:

We want to take a moment now to point out an Apple chart the community on StockTwits loved. It emphasizes the importance of price patterns and pattern recognition in the stock market:

 

We also particularly enjoyed watching Sentiment on the StockTwits $AAPL stream. It could be argued that the StockTwits stream absolutely nailed this move by Apple off its lows. Bullish Sentiment on StockTwits was in an uptrend way before Icahn announced that he had amassed a huge position.

Apple was the bright spot this week, but the macro picture appears to be deteriorating. Foremost, the violence in Egypt has caught the attention of many. It’s very possible that we will see two major civil wars simultaneously occurring in the Middle East — in Syria and Egypt. The Crude Oil stream ($CL_F) is particularly active about this.

Then of course there are bonds. Rates are rising and many are searching for a fair value. We saw several great posts with excellent insight on this emerge:

1. The long bond, $TLT, has officially entered bear territory.
2. Bullishness on bonds has fallen to it its lowest level in 2 years.
3. Interest rates are normalizing but investors need to know: what is normal?
4. Mortgage applications are tanking.

At one point on Friday both the iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF ($TLT) and the ProShares UltraShort 20+ Year Treasury ETF ($TBT) were trending side by side:

 

Earnings season is nearly over and we all just learned how two large components of the Dow, Cisco ($CSCO) and Walmart ($WMT), gave gloomy outlooks for the rest of year. Cisco fell 10% and Walmart seems to have fallen into a Kafkian nightmare. Just look at the three comments we stacked below:

The other key stories happening on StockTwits:

 

Four images that show the Hyperloop and its proposed destination

 

The Tesla chart looks a lot like Google Search trends for Elon Musk

 

Japan’s public debt has hit one quadrillion Yen for the first time

 

The Armo Trader examines two very contentious economic charts posted to StockTwits

 

Accelerated Learning: Hacking the CFA Exam

 

A lesson on how rotations can happen without invalidating a secular trend

 

In less than 5 minutes Carl Icahn added more than $4 billion to Apple’s market cap

 

This notice was posted to Icahn’s website before his Apple tweet

 

Social Media Use For Investor Relations Is Clearly Here To Stay

 

Shorting gold might be a crowded trade

 

The most hilarious Apple photo album you’ve seen

 

Highlighted by Abnormal Returns: “You can’t buy Apple just because Carl Icahn said so…It’s your money you need to be responsible with it.” – Howard Lindon

 

Three must see charts:

1.) Tesla, the Tulip Bubble, and the South Sea Company:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.) The S&P 500 and its P/E ratios since 1900:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.) There have been 6 of these in the last 10 days: