The S&P 500’s information technology sector wasn’t getting any help from Apple Inc. on Tuesday afternoon, after the tech giant’s highly-anticipated marketing event.
Tech was the S&P 500’s worst-performing sector in afternoon trading, with losses of around 1.7% as Apple shares slumped, according to FactSet data, at last check. The company’s event kicked off at 1 p.m. Eastern Time, with investors watching for details of its new iPhone 15.
“While the Apple iPhone has been a revolutionary product for the world and even more so for the company, a new version being announced is not exactly a make-or-break moment for the stock,” said Bespoke Investment Group, in a note Tuesday. “Previous announcements have coincided with plenty of highs, lows, and everything in between for the stock.”
Still, overall, Apple has been “a monster during the iPhone era,” said Bespoke, which looked at the history of its stock-price movements after new releases of the phone dating back to 2007.
Apple, with a massive market value of around $2.8 trillion, is among the group of so-called Big Tech stocks that carry a collectively large weight in the S&P 500 index. Shares of Apple have surged more than 35% this year, far exceeding the S&P 500’s more than 16% climb year to date, FactSet data showed, at last check.
The S&P 500’s tech sector has jumped even higher so far in 2023.
Shares of the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund
XLK,
which tracks an index of tech stocks in the S&P 500, have soared more than 37% this year, according to FactSet data, at last check. On Tuesday afternoon, the exchange-traded fund was trading slightly below its 50-day moving average as its shares fell 1.7%.
Meanwhile, the Invesco QQQ Trust Series I
QQQ,
which tracks the Nasdaq-100 index and whose biggest holding on Sept. 11 was Apple, was down 0.9% Tuesday afternoon, FactSet data show. That trimmed its year-to-date gains to around 40%.
Shares of tech company Oracle Corp.
ORCL,
were weighing on the S&P 500 with a steep drop of more than 14% in afternoon trading Tuesday, after its revenue outlook fell below Wall Street expectations.
The S&P 500 index
SPX
was down 0.6% on Tuesday afternoon after the Apple marketing event ended and investors braced for an inflation reading on Wednesday. Apple’s shares
AAPL,
were trading sharply lower, with a 2.2% loss.
The U.S. stock market was down Tuesday afternoon, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite
COMP
shedding 1% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA
dipped less than 0.1%, according to FactSet data, at last check.
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