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By Scott Moritz, TheStreet

 

Apple (AAPL) says the iPad will be available in nine countries later this month after supply shortages forced the company to delay its international push.

 

Apple says the iPad will be available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. by May 28. Apple will start taking preorders in those countries Monday.

 

Apple has sold 1 million iPads in the first month, a strong debut for the first new Apple product since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Due to high demand and limited supply, Apple had to delay overseas iPad sales a month.

 

The grown-ups have left the buildings. That's the only true way to view what happened Thursday in the markets.

The first 350 points down I'm putting squarely on the hands of Jean-Claude Trichet, the now mythical leader of the European Union, who simply disappeared when we were at a gangrenous moment. You either had to perform radical surgery against the profligate countries, cordoning off the infection, or you had to say, "The patient will be preserved, whole, at all costs."

 

Instead, we got nothing. The doctor hid in the cafeteria instead of the E.R. Shameless.

 

Playboy (PLA) has already cut its staff and cut its office space … but you know things are bad when Hef starts cutting back on the amount of skin his Bunnies are baring.

According to industry reports, Playboy is planning on a mix of new sites aimed at tackling a tamer market – and none of them involve nudity. According to Playboy insiders, the company is developing a “free, safe-for-work site” its calling TheSmokingJacket.com, as well as additional subscription content with a slightly tamer feel. Think Maxim, not … well, any number of dirty M words that cross your mind.

 

By Philip van Doorn, TheStreet

 

While today's frantic trading of 10-year Treasuries mirrored the wacky action in the stock market in the wake of a possibly erroneous trade of Procter & Gamble (PG) shares, the action reflected euro zone fears.

 

"There's a lot of foreign money coming in," says Tom Graff of Cavanaugh Capital Management.

 

After closing at a yield of 3.55% Wednesday, the 10-year yield dropped to about 3.40% at 2:15 p.m. ET Thursday afternoon, plunging as low as 3.3%. Then, over the next 20 minutes, coinciding with the recovery of the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU), the yield rose to 3.4%, eventually closing at 3.375%.

 

 

By Laurie Kulikowski, TheStreet

 

The market drop on Thursday sent retail trading volumes spiking at online brokerage firms such as TD Ameritrade (AMTD) and E*Trade Financial (ETFC).

 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU) plunged more than 1,000 points at one point Thursday, briefly sending the index below 10,000. The blue-chip index closed down about 350 points amid investor fears about the debt crisis in Greece spreading to the rest of Europe. High-frequency trading programs were mentioned by some market observers as contributing the selloff.

 

A possible trading error in Procter & Gamble's (PG) stock was cited as the culprit behind the market's extreme drop, just before 3 p.m. ET. Reports said Citigroup (C) was involved with the bad trade. The company issued a statement saying it had no evidence of its involvement in such a trade. Either way, the market volatility was a boon for online brokerages.

 

 

By Scott Moritz, TheStreet

 

The Thursday stock wipeout set the altimeter spinning for some big tech stocks before late trading pulled the market out of the nosedive.

 

In the wake of the selloff, market observers and news outlets were speculating about the cause of the bloodbath. Some pointed to a trading error. Others say the computer-generated high-volume trading may have also run amok compounding the selling activity, which sent the Dow Index down nearly 1,000 points mid-afternoon.

 

The selling frenzy was felt across tech. Here are some of the names that dropped:

 

Was it real? Was it what we call a "whoosh," where the market just crashed and everyone who wanted to sell had to sell?

 

Or was it just a key-punch error, where someone was trying to sell $15 million worth of stock and the order came out as $15 billion? Was it an order feed that broke down?

We aren't sure, but we know the system was overwhelmed and the market didn't work.

How do you play a market that does not work? How do you play a fast-motion crash instead of the 18% decline we had in a week back in October 2008?

 

By John Lansing, InvestorPlace.com 

Wall Street suffered a brutal session today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping as much as 1,000 points intraday and temporarily dipping below the 10,000 mark. That’s a mid-day swing of more than 9% -- sending the benchmark index to its worst reading since February. The market ended up fighting back to 10,520 at the close, but still logged its worst intraday decline in history.

 

But the most important story, believe it or not, is not the stock market per se. The real chaos investors need to watch closely is the currency markets and gold. This will tell us whether the bull market is over or whether investors can count on the market recovering from today's sell-off.

 

Talk about your wild days of trading.

 

Procter & Gamble (PG), usually a boring defensive stock, traded for $40 a share at its low Thursday. No wonder some speculated a glitch somewhere in its pricing; this sort of stock doesn't ordinarily drop $20 in value in less than five minutes of trading.

 

But it wasn't the only odd move. Shares of my favorite stock to own Apple (AAPL) apparently traded below $200 Thursday, if only long enough for one lucky investor to get a deal. It was back up almost immediately. (And late word is that a lot of the low-priced sales will be voided.)

 

I love Apple and have a $300 target that frankly is too low.

• 5 of the worst stocks out there

But even after a strong recovery, a lot of stocks remained down on what I estimate to be fear-based selling, not reality. I would use this opportunity to buy shares. Three names come to mind.

 

Wow! Or, maybe better, Yeeouch!

In the last hour of trading on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1,000 points as it fell and kept on falling. Then just 350 points or so after it rallied off the bottom.

It closed near 10,500, off about 380, or a bit more than 3%.

My best guess on what happened is that the selling of the past two days and the first part of Thursday finally took prices on the major indexes low enough to trigger massive program trading.

 

William Shatner made a name for himself on "Star Trek," but he's making his fortune from a travel website.

Shatner has filmed advertisements for Priceline.com(PCLN) since 1997, and received shares in the company as part of his compensation. We don't know the starting value of the shares he has received over the years, but Priceline has gone from under $10 a decade ago to nearly $250 now.

And the rumor on Wall Street is that Priceline has helped Shatner build his fortune to $600 million, according to Times Online. 

By Laurie Kulikowski, TheStreet

 

Citigroup (C) shares have slumped as weakness in the stock market has conspired with the government's decision to begin selling part of its stake in the bank to knock the shares down as much as 20% from recent highs.

 

The shares have sunk 14% since April 23, the last trading day before the US Treasury said it would begin selling 20% of the 7.7 billion Citigroup shares it owns in relation to the company's $45 billion bailout. On an intraday basis, using Wednesday's session low of $4.04 and a near-term peak of $5.07 on April 15, the stock was down 20%.

 

The KBW Bank index (BKX) is down just 5% over the same period. Citigroup's weighting in the index is 7.6%.

 

By Alix Steel, TheStreet

 

Gold was rising today as investors seek safety from the sinking euro, Greece riots and Portugal debt fears.

 

Gold for June delivery was rising $10.30 to $1,185.30 an ounce at the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gold traded as high as $1,187.30 and as low as $1,173. The U.S. dollar index was rising 0.3% to $84.40 while the euro hit a one-year low, falling 0.5% to $1.27 against the dollar. The spot gold price Thursday was rising over $11, according to Kitco's gold index.

 

A falling euro is boosting gold prices as investors look for a hard asset that keeps its value. As the debt of European Union nations balloons, investors are speculating that the European Central Bank might have to print money to address the situation.

 

Stocks gapped lower in the opening minutes of trading Wednesday as concerns over the future of the eurozone and the solvency of the southern states lingered.

 

It was the first two-day drop since early February. The dollar jumped at the expense of the euro, and commodities were clipped.

 

But then suddenly, when the Dow Industrial Average seemed fated for another triple-digit down day, buyers regrouped and charged. Bears were caught off guard. Large-cap stocks briefly pushed back into positive territory before shares swiveled and moved back into the red. In today's trading, stocks continue to stabilize.

 

High-yield dividend stocks were hard to come by in the recession, as some big blue chips slashed their payouts. But now, dividend growth appears to be back. 

According to Standard and Poor's, only 48 companies in the S&P 500 decreased their dividend payments during the first quarter of 2010 -- a vast improvement over the record 367 companies that slashed dividends during the same period in 2009 -- adding $6.4 billion in total dividends.

And not all stocks boosting payouts are the blue chips. Some small caps are offering mammoth yields right now -- including one tiny stock with a 12% dividend yield.