Nasdaq rebalance doesn't ding Apple stock
Despite a recent tweak of the Nasdaq 100 that lightened Apple's share of the index and led to fears of a sell-off and price drop, the stock is still a hot commodity.
Apple's stock is still very much in demand despite recent concerns that a lightening of its shares on the Nasdaq 100 would lead to a sell-off and thus a price drop, according to Reuters.
In an attempt to rebalance the weighting of companies on the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index, the exchange recently shrunk the percentage taken up by Apple to 12.33 percent from 20.49 percent--the largest individual change. At the same time, Nasdaq bumped up the weightings on the shares of other tech giants, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Google, Intel, and Oracle. Such weightings are used by fund managers to mirror the index and determine how many shares of each company to hold.
The lowering of Apple's weighting on the Nasdaq led to some initial concerns that when fund managers dumped their Apple shares en masse to rebalance their holdings, a significant drop in the stock's price would follow.
Under the new rules, fund managers were forced to unload Apple shares between April 5--when the rebalancing was announced--and Friday--when the change officially took place. The price decline amounted to around 5 percent before the shares started to recover, Reuters said.
Ultimately, instead of creating a drag on Apple's stock, the sell-off apparently created a buying opportunity for individual investors. Yesterday, Apple stock closed down just a bit over 1 percent. The stock is up nearly 7 percent since the start of 2011.
It doesn't hurt that Apple recently reported second-quarter earnings that surpassed expectations and were aided by strong sales of the iPhone and iMac.