Despite the hullaballoo over the Nasdaq stock market’s failure on Thursday afternoon, traders remained fixated squarely on Apple Inc.’s then-frozen stock price.
Why? Because Carl C. Icahn had taken to Twitter again.
“Tim,†of course, is Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive. And Mr. Icahn’s tweet suggests that “Tim†is in agreement on a stock buyback. Perhaps that’s not surprising: the company announced in April that it would raise its share repurchases to $60 billion from $10 billion after pressure from the hedge fund manager David Einhorn.
So far, the famously irascible Mr. Icahn has kept his tweets about Apple civil, calling the company undervalued even as the company’s stock drifted downward.
Shares in Apple closed up slightly on Thursday, at $502.96. They are up nearly 8 percent since Aug. 13, when Mr. Icahn first disclosed he had accumulated a position in the company, adding some $22 billion in market value.
