The Dow Jones Industrial Average is slumping Thursday afternoon with shares of Dow Inc. and Apple seeing the biggest losses for the index. This has led some observers to ask if Apple CEO Tim Cook has made Apple too dependent on China.
Cook, since joining Apple more than 20 years ago, is famous for having “transformed Apple’s supply chain, relying on China to manufacture devices with the help of low-cost, skilled labor, and to ship those products around the world,” as Mark Gurman wrote just this morning for Bloomberg News.
For this, Cook is called an “operations genius” by some.
Shares of Dow Inc. and Apple Inc. are contributing to the index’s intraday decline, as the Dow was most recently trading 560 points, or 2.1%, lower.
Dow Inc.’s shares are down $1.72, or 4.0%, while those of Apple Inc. have declined $12.49 (4.26%), combining for a roughly 90-point drag on the Dow.
MacDailyNews Take: We like to break Betteridge’s law of headlines even more than Tim Cook likes to put all of Apple’s eggs in one basket. Imagine if Apple had over the past several years invested some of the $400 billion they’ve spent on buybacks on diversifying production, you know, in case of trade issues, natural disasters, health emergencies, foreign government actions, etcetera? The good news is that with Apple so dependent on China, every time China catches a cold, we get a nice irrational discount sale on Apple shares.