The change for Apple puts the ratio for the company’s stock and outstanding shares more in line based on the way Nasdaq calculates the index. Thanks to the Mac, iPhone and iPad maker’s strong growth over the past few years, its stock ended up with more than twice the weight it should have.
Apple isn’t the only Nasdaq-100 company to be impacted by the change. 81 other companies are losing a little weight on the index, and a small handfull will gain slightly. Microsoft, for example, will climb from 3.4 percent up to 8.3 percent.
At 12.3 percent, Apple will still be the largest single component on the index. Oracle will climb to 6.7 percent, Intel will inch up to 4.2 percent, and Google will rise to 5.8 percent.
The change won’t rearrange the order of the stocks on the index, and it won’t cause any stocks to be dropped, either.
Nasdaq is announcing the reindexing today, but won’t put the changes into effect until May 2. “We wanted to make this very transparent,” commented Nasdaq executive vice president John Jacobs. “Everyone will see what we’re doing and everyone will have a month before we do this.”
Apple may be seeing the impact of the change already. In pre-market trading Tuesday morning the company’s stock was down from $341.19 at Monday’s closing to $337.00, down -4.19 (-1.23%).