Apple stock closed at a record high on Monday, pushing the S&P 500 stock index over the $20 trillion mark. Apple’s stock is the largest component of the S&P 500 and is a core holding on Wall Street as well, according to Reuters.
Some big names may be missing Apple now
On Monday, the stock closed at $133.29 after climbing 0.9%, closing higher than its record high closing of $133 hit on February 23, 2015. This rise gave the company a market value of about $699 billion.
In recent months, mutual funds have placed large bets on Apple, but some big names missed out on its recent acceleration. Third Point LLC, run by hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, lowered its stake in the iPhone maker by 26% to 1.9 million shares in the fourth quarter, according to regulatory filings. Last year, even George Soros and Carl Icahn shed Apple’s shares, notes Reuters.
Meanwhile, a number of mutual funds which recently reported that they were Apple shareholders, jumped by 187% to 287, according to Morningstar. The number of mutual funds liquidating their holdings in the stock dropped 26% to 151.
The stock enjoys the backing of several big names, including Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett said last August that they increased the firm’s stake in the iPhone maker by 55% to 15 million shares. The stake’s current worth is $2 billion. In January, David Einhorn’s hedge fund Greenlight Capital said that it still likes the stock, notes Reuters.
iPhone sales a major contributor
Apple’s stock witnessed a push after the company reported its quarterly earnings. For the quarter ending December 31, the company sold 78.3 million iPhones, which helped it generate revenue of $54.38 billion. A rise of 5% in comparison to the previous year was seen in revenue from iPhone sales during the October-through-December holiday shopping period.
A larger share of total revenue was attributable to iPhone sales, which accounted for 69.4% of the total revenue. This was higher than 68.1% during the same quarter of 2015. Bullish comments from analysts also boosted the stock price.
“We are increasingly confident in the outlook for Apple’s iPhone 8 cycle in the second half of the year, and as a result are raising both our forecasts and our target price,” Goldman Sachs said on Monday.
From the lows it touched in the first half of last year, the stock has climbed 50%, and so far in 2017, it is up 15%. It is still short of its all-time intra-day high of $134.54, set on April 28, 2015.
