Apple
shares extended their 2024 losing streak to four sessions on Friday, bringing the stock’s year-to-date decline to 5.9%. The company’s market value loss since the end of last year stands at more than $176 billion.
Apple shares have been pressured this week by a flurry of cautious analyst notes. Barclays downgraded its rating on the stock to Underweight from Equal Weight earlier this week, noting weakness in sales of iPhones and Mac computers, in particular in China. Piper Sandler on Thursday went to Neutral from Overweight, citing similar concerns. Apple lost market share in high-end smartphones in 2023, according to data published this week by Counterpoint Research.
Apple shares traded in positive territory for much of Friday’s session, but they sagged after the New York Times reported that the Justice Department “is in the late stages” of investigating the company, and could “file a sweeping antitrust case” in the first half of the year focused on Apple’s strategies for protecting its iPhone business. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron’s. The Times report said that both Apple and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
This week’s consecutive declines marks Apple’s longest losing streak to open a new year since 1982, the last time the stock fell for the first four trading days of a calendar year, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
In aggregate, the stock has performed worst to start the year, however. Over the first four trading days of 2019, Apple shares dropped 6.2%; the stock fell 8.4% during the first four days of 2016. On both of those occasions, the stock still ended higher for the year.
Apple has fallen more than 5% in January five times over the past 20 years, according to FactSet data. On four of those occasions the stock went on to post an annual gain. In three of those instances the shares recouped their January losses by the end of April and on another it took until November. The exception was 2008. It took Apple stock until October 2009 to return to its year-end 2007 price.
Apple is not the only tech stock under pressure this year. Investors having been taking profit in tech shares so far in 2024 after a sharp run-up in the last few months of 2023.
Apple’s status as the world’s most valuable company looks increasingly tenuous.
Microsoft
closed Friday with a market value of $2.73 trillion, about $90 billion behind Apple at $2.82 billion. It’s the smallest gap between the two companies since November 2021.
Write to Callum Keown at callum.keown@dowjones.com and Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com
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