Is Carl Icahn Selling Apple (AAPL) Today?

With today's weakness in Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock there is chatter on trading desks that Carl Icahn is selling the stock. At the end of June, Icahn and his hedge funds owned 52,760,848 shares of Apple stock.

It has been about one year since Icahn first disclosed his stake in Apple. On August 13, 2013, Icahn announced on Twitter "We currently have a large position in APPLE. We believe the company to be extremely undervalued."

On an adjusted basis, the stock was at around $65.29 when he first disclosed his stake. So, shares are up around 53% since he first got involved in the name.

Shares of Apple were weak off the open related to comments from Pacific Crest to take profits ahead of next week's iPhone event. They said they may downgrade the name unless Apple releases something that significantly changes the profit picture.

While the Pacific Crest comments were clearly negative, it is hard to attribute a 4% sell-off to those comments alone. However, if word got out that Icahn was in fact selling that could have easily explained the move. The Icahn rumors are pure trading desk speculation at this point and it wouldn't be a surprise if he denied the rumor later today or in the near future.

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