Apple Inc.’s Gigantic Impact: Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Meteoric Rise Is Distorting Everything
Shah Gilani: It happened almost a year ago, and it’s happening again. The meteoric rise in Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) stock price is distorting the major benchmark indexes, including the Nasdaq-100, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500.
That is still true even though the Nasdaq executed a “special rebalancing” of its Nasdaq-100 tech-heavy index to reduce Apple’s 20% weighting down to 12% last April.
With Apple’s impact on the Nasdaq 100 now approaching 17% (that’s greater than Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC)…combined), it’s only a matter of time before another rebalancing takes a bite out of Apple’s influence on this important index.
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The problem isn’t that Apple’s share price has been so strong.
It’s that investors may be unaware that the Nasdaq 100′s rise and the Nasdaq Composite’s jump to new 10-year highs wouldn’t have been remotely possible without Apple’s 60%+ gain since last summer.
Instead, investors need to understand Apple’s impact on these market barometers and pay more attention to the core movements in those markets, not just the shine of a single stock.
Apple’s Gigantic Impact
Apple’s outsized impact on the Nasdaq-100 (NDX), which is a 100-stock index of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq, impacts in equal measure the popular $32 billion PowerShares QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ). The QQQ is an ETF based entirely on the NDX.
Apple’s nearly 17% weighting in the NDX causes the NDX and the QQQ ETF to be closely correlated to Apple’s stock whenever it makes a big move up or down.
The NDX (and by extension the QQQ ETF) is also a sub-set of the Nasdaq Composite Index.
The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP) measures all of the domestic and international common stocks listed on The Nasdaq Stock Market. The COMP is one of the most widely followed and quoted major market indices.
Apple’s weighting in the Nasdaq Composite is 10.6%. Thanks in no small part to this heavy weighting, the COMP is now approaching 3,000 – a level it hasn’t seen since November 17, 2000.
But it’s not just the tech-heavy NDX and COMP where Apple has an impact.
Apple’s weighting in the monster of all institutional benchmarks, the S&P 500, is 3.8%. That’s more than ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) at 3.3% and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) at 1.9%.
The Markets “Ex-Apple”
So how big of an impact has Apple singlehandedly had on the indices everybody watches, trades and measures performance against?
Apple’s shares, which are up 26% this year (2012) has boosted the NDX (QQQ’s) to a gain of 13.2%, and the S&P 500 to a 7.7% gain.
But, there are some worms in Apple’s outsized weightings.
The stock is distorting broad market measures and masking, though still strong, a less robust market than investors realize.
The problem has become so acute that several major firms’ analysts are delivering clients two sets of market reports, one with Apple included and one “ex-Apple.”
The chief equity strategist at UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) creates two versions of his S&P 500 outlook reports; so do analysts at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS), Barclay’s Capital, Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS).
For example, they point out to clients that the S&P’s fourth quarter 6.6% rise would have been only a 2.8% gain ex-Apple (reflecting Apple’s 40% gain since Thanksgiving) and profit margin growth, which registered a 0.05% gain in the fourth quarter, would have actually been a negative 2.2% ex-Apple.
Of course, one way to not worry about Apple’s positive impact on major indices is to have a huge position in the stock as part of your total portfolio.
Good luck with that if you don’t already own it and can’t afford it at its $510+ per share price.
But, it’s not about how strong Apple is and how most investors have missed its sensational ride; it’s about how much of an influence Apple has on investors’ market perceptions.
And specifically, how strong or weak market metrics are ex-Apple.
So consider this your early warning: Apple stock has been beyond stellar, but Apple is not the market.
It just happens to be the market’s biggest draw.
And right now Apple’s heft is distorting everything.
Written By Shah Gilani From Money Morning
Shah Gilani is the editor of the highly successful trading research service, The Capital Wave Forecast, and a contributing editor to both Money Morning and The Money Map Report. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on the credit crisis. His published open letters to the White House, Congress and U.S. Treasury secretaries have outlined detailed alternative policy options that have been lauded by academics and legislators.
His experience and knowledge uniquely qualify him as an expert. Gilani ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When the OEX (options on the Standard & Poor’s 100) began trading on March 11, 1983, Gilani was working in the pit as a market maker, and along with other traders popularized what later became known as the VIX (volatility index). He left Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyds TSB. Gilani went on to originate and run a packaged fixed-income trading desk for Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old line New York boutique bond firm, and established that company’s listed and OTC trading desks. Gilani started another hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003, when he retired to develop land holdings with partners.
Here’s the ironic part; investors have not in fact “missed its sensational ride”. The ride is just getting started. Check out Apple’s P/E ratio, presently at a ludicrously low 14.67. That’s a measure of how bad investors are at valuing Apple. At a minimum, this stock should be at a P/E of 30, which is its average P/E through the first decade of this century. And the longer it takes for investors to wake up to the irresistible force that is Apple’s earnings growth, the more the “coiled spring” that is Apple’s potential will compress. Eventually, it will unwind, bringing anyone who buys Apple now and hangs on for the long term huge returns on their investment. It’s inevitable, barring the end of capitalism as we know it.
AAPL has appalled pundits in the market and competitors!!