As might have been predicted, Apple (AAPL) shares opened sharply higher Monday morning after a Friday rout that knocked more than $10 off the stock’s price — and over $9 billion off the company’s market cap.

Many investors found the timing of the sell-off suspicious, pegged as it seemed to be on a bogus report that Deutsche Bank had downgraded the stock. See Why AAPL fell 10.32 points Friday.

A downgrade the day before Apple is scheduled to report earnings made no sense, since most analysts we polled expect the company to blow past not only its own guidance (earnings of $1.7 to $1.78 a share on revenue of $11.3 to $11.6 billion), but the Street’s consensus (earnings of $2.07 on revenue of $12.06 billion). See Apple’s earnings: What the analysts say.

Tune in here after the markets close today for Apple’s fiscal Q1 2010 earnings report, and again at 5 p.m. for our coverage of the company’s quarterly conference call.

Tune in Tuesday morning for our quarterly review of how well — or badly — the analysts did in anticipating Apple’s results.

See also:

• Apple’s Q4 2009 earnings: How the analysts got it so wrong
• Apple’s Q3 2009: Analyzing the analysts
• Apple’s Q2 2009: Analyzing the analysts
• Apple’s Q1 2009: Analyzing the analysts
• Apple’s Q4 2008: Analyzing the analysts

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]