Mob pyschology theory for stocks holding up

So, I'm beginning to think more and more that my idea of mob pyschology is holding up in terms of stock prices. Late in the day yesterday, Apple announced their earnings - very positive. I thought to myself that the stock has been kinda beaten down over the whole Steve Jobs thing. Then in general the market has been pretty grim, with GM losing the top global crown to Toyota after 77 years on top and Bank of America being pretty shaky now after their "forced" acquisition of Merill Lynch. I made a prediction to myself that Apple would definitely go up in after market trades as well as in trading today.

This morning, I told one of my friends that Apple would go up. I just checked and as of 10:40AM, AAPL is up to $88.10, a gain of 6.36%. It's not much, especially since AAPL moved a bit yesterday from news that they are being investigated about the whole Jobs thing (kinda silly to spend the energy on that, but whatever). But as I've said in a previous post, losing Jobs does not mean they will sell less MacBooks and iPods. It doesn't work that way for a company as innovative as they are.

In any case, I'm gonna keep applying my gut feelings to certain headlines and see if the market responds relatively the same way. By the way, even though AAPL is up, rest of market is down, so that 6.36% should be considered a blessing. Now you might ask why I didn't buy AAPL? Well, I told myself to stop buying little bits of stock and to at least buy 25+ shares (preferably 50+) to make any trade worthwhile for me. Commission really eats away at any gains, so it's silly to run around buying 10 shares here and there (although for AAPL, 10 shares yesterday would've been $800+). So I have an excuse to just lay low and test my gut feelings. I just wonder, sometimes, how things would be different if I had $10 - 25K lying around and I made the gambles (I say gambles, cause that's what they were) on AIG, FRE, PALM, and AAPL when I thought of them. Hmm...

(Note: I do not own any shares of AIG, PALM, or AAPL. I do, however, own some nominal shares of FRE.)