As the markets opened on Tuesday morning Apple stock began taking a hard hit.

AAPL stock slipped over $5.00 or 3.5 percent after TheStreet.com reported on a research note from Miller Tabak which purportedly said that Apple has cut the production number of iPhones from 9 million units to 4.5 million units.

It was later revealed that the analyst released no such note and that the entire thing was overblown.

“Disregard it. There’s no note on Apple today,” Miller Tabak analyst Peter Boockvar said. “It’s pure noise.”

This afternoon the stock began to recover, trading up $1.72, or 1.31%, to $133.48 after the stock was upgraded to “Buy” from “Hold” by Citigroup, citing Tuesday’s significant pullback.

Citigroup kept its price target unchanged at $160 while saying in a note to investors that rumored iPhone and iPod production cuts in Asia should not come as a surprise to investors and that such cuts would reflect normal channel inventory clearance ahead of new product introductions in August and September.