The Nasdaq stock exchange has announced plans to rebalance its benchmark Nasdaq 100 next month.
And the move will have serious repercussions for Aple.
In the rebalancing, the exchange will slash Apple Inc’s weighting, which currently makes up better than 20% of the entire index.
According to Wall Street analysts who have commented on the matter, a rebalancing of the Nasdaq 100 “is not an unusual event in itself.” But cutting Apple’s portion of the Nasdaq-100 index from 20% all the way down 12% is, indeed, very significant.
Simultaneously, the weighting of Google and Microsoft will climb.
The rebalancing, says Tom Lauricella of All Things Digital, was driven in part by “the seemingly unstoppable rise in Apple shares, which are up more than fourfold in the past two years. The tech company’s big weighting means that a change in fortune for the maker of iPhones, iPods and iPads has a huge impact on one of the most heavily traded indexes in the market.”
The rebalancing takes effect May 2, 2011.
On Tuesday at 10:32 am CST, shares of Apple (AAPL) were largely unaffected by the news and trading down only $0.71 to $340.48.
