The employment data released on Oct. 5 certainly raised some eyebrows. First off, the number of jobs created in September was almost exactly as expected, at 114,000, while the August number was revised up by better than 40,000 jobs.

But the big news was that somehow the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1% to 7.8% (expectations had been that it might tick up to 8.2%).

There appears to have been some sort of, shall we say, aberration in the data, as the household survey suggests that 873,000 jobs were added last month, an annualized rate of 10.5 million.

(That survey is used to calculate the unemployment rate, while the number of jobs created that gets focused on every month is a function of the establishment survey. So if you're scratching your head at how headline job growth of 114,000 generated a sizable drop in the headline unemployment rate, now you know.)

In addition to the squirrelliness of that giant number (the aforementioned 873,000), it seems an enormous amount (581,000) were part-time jobs of some sort.

Working backward

Joan McCullough, of East Shore Partners, in a letter to clients, said she thought something smelled fishy. When she talked to the Bureau of Labor Statistics about it, all the contact there could say was that they had received a number of phone calls, and the data were "suspicious," but other than that they couldn't really comment on it.

I will leave it to the tinfoil hat crowd (or former General Electric (GE) CEO Jack Welch) to discover the "truth." (Read about Welch's controversial Tweet on the subject here. But there is probably no one who doesn't think that the economic data are massaged. So whether this was pure statistical nonsense or some government employee had an agenda, I don't know.

But I will say that I would be willing to bet a serious amount of money that there were not 873,000 jobs created in the month of September, and I would expect that number to be revised away prospectively.

Riding the Apple-coaster

Turning from the macro to the micro, after another huge run this year, Apple (AAPL) has been a real drag on the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPX) of late. The stock looks sick from a technical standpoint, though I would be the first to admit that I am an amateur technician at best.

I have no dog in this hunt, since I have no position in Apple, long or short. The reason I bring it up is because Apple is a very important holding in so many portfolios, and has a huge chunk of mindshare when it comes to investor psychology. For those who aren't involved I think it is an interesting example of what tops often look like. (I am assuming that Apple is making a top, though I don't have any short position, given that I don't have a strong case for suggesting that it may have peaked.)

There is no doubt that there is tremendous bullishness (and indeed, near euphoria) about Apple. Analysts have even gone so far this year as to suggest the company would soon get to a $1 trillion market capitalization. (This is something I find rather implausible, given the amount of revenue and continuing margins required to justify such a valuation).

However, one thing that the bulls tend to overlook is that the law of large numbers is in operation here, as is consumer fickleness. Tremendous numbers of extraordinarily successful products have been responsible for a large part of Apple's past growth and current revenues. To maintain its trajectory, that past success must not only be replicated, but topped, which is a very tall order.

Maybe its hype-er drive malfunctioned

The other thing that strikes me as a bit odd is that after Apple lowered its guidance for this quarter, and given the hype over its new phone, one would have thought people would be piling into it, knowing it would easily beat that guidance number.

Thus I find its recent weakness to be a potentially interesting market barometer. October generically causes people angst -- though I am not a big believer in the idea that this month automatically equals lower stock prices -- and the stock market has absorbed a fair amount of bad news, which hasn't mattered. But if bad news does start to matter, then the sledding may get a little rougher quickly.

At the time of publication, Bill Fleckenstein did not own or control shares of any company mentioned in this column.