The easy solution, if you are day trading and the market has no strong bias, take no position or keep the position very small or the powers that be will have the incentive to move against us.
If you consider AAPL and VRX "lower volatility" stocks I'd be curious what you consider a higher volatility stock! You do know they both average over 30M shares traded per day. That's over $3 billion dollars a day for AAPL. You seriously think a MM is going to manipulate that kind of volume for hours at a time to get a couple bucks off your 5000 shares?
Yes on days that AAPL & VRX do not have news these stocks open and after the first 30 mins of trade do not move until the market makers algos notice day traders taking a position, at that point the price moves against the day trade to keep the position from being in the money. I have hundreds of the following screenshots that prove how precise these algos are. In this example I was short TESLA, the red shaded area is in the money, notice how the market maker keeps the price per share out of the money? http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/permabull1/IMG_2343_zpssfxerr7x.jpg