“While Sir Isaac Newton was able to achieve a moment of scientific insight regarding the phenomenon of gravity through his visceral observation of the behavior of apples falling from a tree, these days one seeks slightly different insight into the state of today’s stock market by observing the role of Apple, Inc. (AAPL) in the current environment,” Chris Kacher and Gil Morales write for Seeking Alpha.
“What is observable in this instance is that the direction of Apple stock, which reported earnings on April 24, has had an increasingly greater correlation to the Nasdaq 100 and by inference, the Nasdaq Composite Index,” Kacher and Morales write. “Today, Apple represents about 17% of the Nasdaq 100 but its effect on the markets seems to have an even greater impact on the direction of the Nasdaq 100.”
Kacher and Morales write, “Since major market indices correlate to a high degree, the ‘Apple effect’ in turn has a significant influence on the other major market indices and begs the question, ‘Has Apple become the market?'”
Much more in the full article here.
Obviously this is one data point, but the stock-ticker at the top of this post on MDN shows:
Apr 28, 2012 – 12:39 AM EDT — AAPL: 603.66 (-4.04, -0.66%) | NASDAQ: 3064.90 (+14.29, +0.47%)
Amusing, given the question on whether the market (and thus NASDAQ) equates to Apple. So, Apple is certainly a big influence, but the article’s titular question is so strictly worded that a single data point can disprove it.
Does not beg the question. It raises it. Completely different things.