The fortunes of
Apple,
the world’s largest public company, have a tendency to lead around much of the rest of the stock market. After the tech giant’s woes contributed to widespread declines last week, investors can now breathe a sigh of relief.
Shares in
Apple
(ticker: AAPL) rose 0.8% in premarket trading, after the stock fell 6% last week amid reports that the Chinese government was banning use of the iPhone among government workers and fears that such bans could widen.
Apple’s woes weighed heavily on the whole stock market given the company’s weighting in the
S&P 500
index, with the tech-heavy
Nasdaq
index slammed amid losses among other groups exposed to China.
But now things are looking up, with investors focused on the upcoming launch of the newest iPhone and beginning to look past the latest China fears. For now, that means investors can rest easier—because if Apple stock can steady or reverse its recent losses, it’s good news for the whole market.
“The Cupertino company will unveil its latest iPhone offering on Tuesday so the buzz surrounding the event could be shoring up the stock today,” said Raffi Boyadjian, an analyst at broker XM. “But it’s also possible that traders overreacted slightly to the news that China is banning the iPhone for government employees, which was seen as a tit-for-tat move to Washington’s growing trade barriers against Beijing.”
Indeed, futures tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes both notched gains in the premarket, with the tech-heavy index poised to rise 0.6%. Tech stocks beyond Apple, especially those exposed to China, were also buoyed, with shares in
Tesla
(TSLA) and
Nvidia
(NVDA), which had both notched declines across the past five days, rising. Tesla stock rose 7.1%, following an upgrade by Morgan Stanley, and
Nvidia
shares were 0.6% higher.
Write to Jack Denton at [email protected]
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