“When Apple’s shares fall, is Wall Street’s entire performance at risk? The outsize influence of Apple on both the technology sector and the entire stock market was thrown into sharp relief when the iPad maker’s shares fell 4.1 percent on Monday,” Caroline Valetkevitch writes for Reuters.
“The alpha male of the stock market, Apple accounts for a third of the S&P tech sector’s 20 percent year-to-date return, the best performance of any of the 10 sectors in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index this year,” Valetkevitch writes. “The problem is, Apple’s success may be masking a larger trend in the wider market toward slower profit growth.”
Valetkevitch writes, “Technology companies are expected to report earnings growth of 7.5 percent for the first quarter, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. But excluding Apple, which is due to report results next Tuesday, the technology sector is looking at an earnings decrease of 0.3 percent, according to the data… Tech sector revenue growth is estimated at 6.7 percent. Without Apple? It’s just 2.3 percent, Thomson Reuters data showed.”
“Apple’s stock accounts for 4.5 percent of the S&P 500 index, a weighting not seen by any company since 1999, when Microsoft Corp had a 4.9 percent weighting,” Valetkevitch writes. “Apple is the largest holding for many money managers, to say nothing of the billions of dollars in index funds of which Apple is a core holding.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple to webcast Q212 earnings release conference call on April 24 – April 3, 2012