The shake-up was prompted by Apple’s decision to enact a 4-for-1 stock split, which would significantly reduce the benchmark’s exposure to the information technology sector. Without Apple’s heavy-lifting, many on Wall Street believe the Dow could have a harder time catching up with the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite, which have already reclaimed their respective records.
“Basically Apple — by itself — took the technology [weighting] within the Dow down from 27.6% to 20.3%. It’s a significant decline,” Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices, told CNBC. “By adding Salesforce, you can come back to 23.1% of the Dow being in technology.”