“Stock picker futility may be back, courtesy of Apple Inc.,” Lu Wang reports for Bloomberg. “The iPhone maker, under-owned by the majority of actively managed funds according to Citigroup Inc., has jumped 13 percent this month to a record, poised for its best return relative to the S&P 500 in three years. Its contribution to the benchmark gauge is almost four times greater than any other stock. At $81 billion, the increase in Apple’s market cap this month alone exceeds the value of 85 percent of the index’s members.”
“The situation is a fresh blow to money managers who just gave signs of life in January after years of trailing the market,” Wang reports. “While sinking equity correlations have prompted strategists such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s David Kostin to predict a renaissance in stock picking, Apple’s surge is an example of a phenomenon some researchers see as dooming active management — the tendency of just a few shooting-star stocks to dominate indexes.”
“Among some 300 funds that are benchmarked to the S&P 500 and have at least $500 million in assets, only a fifth hold Apple more than its representation in the index, according to latest regulatory filings compiled by Bloomberg,” Wang reports. “These funds have returned an average 4.1 percent this month, compared with 3.1 percent from those that have no stake.”
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MacDailyNews Take: The number of “professional” stock pickers who do not understand Apple is appalling.