Monday, August 31, 2020

Doing the Splits


A pair of high-profile stocks began trading at split-adjusted prices today: Apple and Tesla. Investors gobbled up their new, lower-price shares.
The electric-vehicle maker split 5-for-1, while the iPhone maker completed a 4-for-1 split.
Tesla stock soared 12.6% today, to $498.32 a share. That pushed its market value to over $464 billion, making it the seventh-most valuable U.S. company—just ahead of Visa. Tesla's market value surpassed Johnson & Johnson last week. It's now behind only the big five technology companies and Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
Apple shares, meanwhile, added 3.4% today, to close at $129.04. It extended its lead as most valuable company around, at more than $2.2 trillion in market capitalization.
But Apple's lower share price means that its influence on the Dow Jones Industrial Average is less than it used to be. That's because the index is weighted based on price, not market capitalization like the S&P 500.
Apple's gain added about 28 points to the Dow today—still the largest contributor—but the index closed down 224 points. Had Apple's split and other changes to the Dow not taken place today, it would have lost only 153 points.
Also effective today, Amgen, Honeywell, and Salesforce.com joined the index, while Exxon Mobil, Pfizer, and Raytheon Technologies fell out.

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