Apple’s record-breaking holiday quarter catapulted the stock north of $500 a share for the first time, and now the company’s market size is skewing some pretty important market indices, including the S&P 500 index. Already Apple of California passed 10 percent of all of NASDAQ value and now the company won an “ex-” designation on the S&P 500 index. Beginning in 1957, S&P has published prices of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States through the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ. S&P 500 fourth-quarter earnings increased a whopping 6.6-percent year-over-year due to Apple’s gangbuster quarter. Without Apple, S&P 500 grew only 2.8 percent (click the illustration).
The company’s share of S&P 500 now stands at 3.8-percent. For comparison’s sake, Exxon Mobil’s share of S&P 500 is 3.3-percent, Microsoft’s 1.9-percent and IBM’s 1.85-percent. This prompted institutions such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Barclays Capital, Wells Fargo, and UBS AG to begin publishing one version of market updates for the companies that make up the S&P 500 and the other for S&P 500 excluding Apple.
Crazy or what? Here are some more nuggets from Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Cheng:
Apple is the biggest earnings contributor to the S&P 500 and it especially affects the tech market. For example: An estimated 21 percent annual earnings increase for the tech sector shrivels to just 5 percent once Apple is factored out. Barclays Capital’s Barry Knapp explained:
- Tim Cook talks worker safety (9to5mac.com)
- 100 million iCloud users, 3 million Apple TVs in 2011, 1 million last quarter (9to5mac.com)
- Samsung says iTV can’t compete because TV is about picture quality (9to5mac.com)
- AAPL passes 10% of all of NASDAQ value as analysts target half a trillion dollar valuation (9to5mac.com)
- Tim Cook: 37 million iPhones, we had a ‘decent quarter’ (9to5mac.com)
