Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak
Apple is now officially included in trading as part of the world’s most prestigious stock market index — the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
The Silicon Valley tech giant replaced AT&T, whose predecessor, American Telephone & Telegraph, was added to the Dow in 1916.
“This was a long time coming,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst of San Jose-based Enderle Group, which tracks the tech sector.
And right off the bat, Apple is in the top five of the 30-member index, in terms of its weighting, with a 4.74 percent weighting share on the Dow. The others in the top five are certainly a who’s who of Corporate America: Goldman Sachs, 3M, IBM and Boeing are the only four companies with a greater weight in the Dow than Apple.
“This shows the increasing importance of tech,” Enderle said.
What’s more, Apple’s weighting tops an array of other famed companies: Walt Disney, Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, American Express, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and General Electric, to name a few.
“Technology is one of the main drivers of the U.S. economy,” Enderle said “Tech is one of the primary sectors with which the U.S. retains a competitive advantage over the rest of the world.”
The changes in the Dow also means that five of the 30 companies that form the famed index are from the Bay Area: Cupertino-based Apple, San Ramon-based Chevron, San Francisco-based Visa, Santa Clara-based Intel and San Jose-based Cisco Systems.
In addition, when Apple’s stock moves 1 percent, that shift will influence the Dow Jones Industrial Average to move about 8.5 points, according to stock market experts.
“Apple’s move to the Dow is a symbol of the hyper changes that are taking place in the economy and society,” said Michael Tchong, founder of San Francisco-based Social Revolution, which tracks technology trends. “You have an innovation company, Apple, replacing a staid company, AT&T. It’s a bellwether of things to come.”
