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The headline could plausibly, and amusingly, be: "Apple Disappoints With 52% Year Over Year Profit Growth"

Note that apple, which has >50% YoY growth, is trading about about 16.5 P/E (ttm). Stock dropped about 6% after hours. As a point of reference, Yahoo also announced results ( revenues down 5% YoY), has a P/E of 17.5, and it's stock ROSE after-hours. Boggles the mind.

I'm not convinced the stock shift is fully explained by "missed estimates" as you notice here. The highest open interest was piled into the ~390 puts for most of the day and look where the stock wound up. This is relevant because the monthly options all expire on Friday. Earnings hasn't happened before options expiration in a while so there could be a lot of institutional play in the market to zero in a particular price to prevent options exposure in both calls/puts. Keep in mind only 0.95% of AAPL stock is owned by individuals[1].

[1] Checked holdings on a Bloomberg earlier out of curiosity.

EDIT: Some related theory:

http://www.aaplpain.com/Site/Home/Entries/2011/10/18_Apple_O...

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