If there’s a stock that professional and retail investors can’t get enough of – it’s Apple.
Many pros will tell you, as Apple goes – so goes theNasdaq. That’s been the case for quite some time.
But with Apple now thelargest company by market cap to have ever traded in history, should Apple begin to wield the same influence over the broader S&P, it will probably end badly.
If Apple is indeed driving gains, then Apple today could be the equivalent to the nifty-fifty of the 1960’s and 1970s, according to Yahoo Finance Editor-In-Chief Aaron Task.
The nifty fifty were considered one-decision stocks because investors thought they could effectively buy and hold forever. (Just like Apple)
And in some cases the thesis played out - examples of nifty-fifty stocks include General Electric, Coca-Cola, and IBM .
However, other examples include Kodak, Xerox and Polaroid. Holding those names for the long haul didn’t play out so well.
“If the market becomes too much about Apple then we’re all in a lot of trouble because if anything goes wrong – anything - it’s going to be Katy bar the door! It would be like having everyone on the same side of a boat. In rocky water, it would get ugly in a hurry.”
However, it’s worth noting that Task does not think the rally is all about Apple. “In fact, I’m not aware of any stock in history where the entire market was dependent on one stock,” he says.
