Apple is going to join the Dow Jones on 18 March
Apple is to jump across to the Dow Jones, becoming the fifth highest-ranked company on the index.
AT&T will be the casualty, with the switch taking place on 18 March this year. Apple is the world’s largest company, but won’t top the Dow as companies are ranked by share price, not by market cap.
The reasoning behind the switch is that Visa will split its shares four ways on the same date, reducing its 9.7 per cent weight in the Dow. The split mean’s Visa’s influence will be reduced to less than three per cent.
Apple has had a bumper year as the graph above shows. The almost hockey-stick trajectory of its share price makes the small gains made by the S&P 500, on which Apple is listed, and the Dow seem minuscule in comparison.
Apple is used to sitting top of the pile on the S&P (its Mrket cap is $736bn), but will have four companies above it on the Dow; Goldman Sachs, 3M, IBM, and Boeing all have shareprices higher than Apple’s.
