I believe that the technical economic term for what you see below is a “roller coaster ride.” You know, where you first get cranked up almost vertically, and then your stomach falls out as you drop, several times.

After Apple’s spectacular earnings report late last week, the stock shot up. Early Monday morning, Philip Elmer-DeWitt quoted a stock analyst predicting a “major sell-off,” and though he thought Apple stock would go up, he also called for it to plummet to $200 soon, taken down with the rest of the market. A few hours later, AAPL dropped by about $3 in a matter of minutes. The next day, there was an even steeper drop of about $5. The next day, in pre-market trading, it plummeted by about $8, erasing all of its gains after the earnings announcement. But then it came back up, then immediately plummeted $8 again in regular trading.

Believe me, after having lived with this stock through the Bush collapses in early and late 2008, when drops like the ones we saw this week led to $80 free-falls and worse, it is not in any way describable “easy” or “comfortable” to sit back and watch this happen, and not do something about it. Fortunately, since Wednesday afternoon, the stock has climbed back up and is just $4 off it’s peak. Hopefully it will start climbing again.

Now, I have been planning for some time to sell off about half my stock this year and hang on to the other half for at least another year or more. I will feel a lot more comfortable having done that, without the whole market tumbling first. And it was not DeWitt’s column or the analyst’s prediction that caused this (though many commenters in the column roundly blamed both for exactly that), but market activity in general, including the thing in Greece. Although, one does smell the malodorous presence of people playing the market for a quick buck–one almost hopes, as it would suggest a better overall stability. Still, it makes you think.