A report today says Apple (AAPL) will be joining the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing wireless carrier AT&T on the well-known stock market index. The change will take place at the end of trading on March 18th. The change was prompted by the Visa 4-for-1 stock split which is scheduled to be effective at the same time.
CNBC:
“The DJIA is price weighted so extremely high stock prices tend to distort the index while very low stock prices have little impact,” said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices in a press release. “Apple’s split brought the stock price down closer to the median price in the DJIA. The Visa split will reduce the technology weight in the DJIA and make room for Apple. Among the current DJIA constituents, AT&T has one of the lowest prices.”
The Dow Jones Average is viewed as an indicator for overall stock market performance in the U.S. Apple will account for 4.66 percent of the index, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior analyst of S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Other members of the Dow Jones include American Express, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Disney, Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, and Visa.
