With Apple’s share price currently north of US$340 (it was at $345.49 at 9:42 AM Eastern time on Wednesday, up 1.42%), few people can afford to buy many shares on their own, but the stock’s ups and downs actually affect many people, noted the Wall Street Journal’s Brett Arends.
“Apple is everywhere on Wall Street,” according to Mr. Arends. “Few stocks are as widely held in regular mutual funds as well as in hedge funds. Few affect the performance of so many retirement portfolios. This is especially unusual because Apple is such a volatile growth stock. In recent years it’s fallen by two-thirds and it’s quadrupled. Most of the other shares that crop up in every portfolio are dull ones like Exxon Mobil or Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson.”
He pointed out that 4,100 mutual funds hold Apple stock, with more than 750 of them putting at least 5% of their portfolio in AAPL and over 100 placing at least 10% of their assets there. In comparison, Exxon shows up in 3,630 funds and P&G in 3,200 of them, although Microsoft is held in nearly 4,800.
Mr. Arend also wrote: “And Apple alone accounts for more than a fifth of the widely followed Nasdaq 100 Index. Anyone investing in that index — such as through the widely-held PowerShares QQQ Trust — may think they are spreading their money broadly across all of America’s top technology stocks. But, in truth, you are investing more of your money in Apple than you are in Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon.com and Cisco Systems — put together!”