Although we don't believe in timing the market or panicking over market movements, we do like to keep an eye on big changes -- just in case they're material to our investing thesis.
What: Shares of severely sibilant solid-state storage specialist OCZ Technology Group (Nasdaq: OCZ) plunged as much as 16.6% in spiky trading.
So what: SSD stocks are falling all over the place because tech giant Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) is reportedly buying a company in the sector. Israel-based Anobit makes controller chips for high-performance Flash memory solutions, so an Apple buy could shut SSD parts suppliers such as CZ, STEC (Nasdaq: STEC), and SanDisk (Nasdaq: SNDK) out of one of the world's most attractive storage accounts.
Now what: All the SSD stocks I've mentioned underperformed the market today, largely in proportion to how heavily shorted each stock is. OCZ fell the hardest because it's under more investor pressure -- with a gobsmacking 43% of the float sold short, there are plenty of nervous shareholders out there.
I wouldn't panic about this development. Apple is a big tuna but there's plenty of fish in the SSD sea.
Interested in more info about OCZ? Add it to My Watchlist.
