How Apple ate Wall Street

Mutual-fund investors aren’t supposed to have to pay attention to the fate of any particular stock. But according to Marketwatch like so many things with technology giant Apple Inc., the regular rules don’t seem to apply.

While Apple’s AAPL -2.57%  stock has been hit hard in recent months — losing more than third of its value since September, including a 12% drop since missing earnings estimates on Wednesday — the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is still the most valuable name on the stock market. That distinction means it looms unusually large in millions of Americans’ investment portfolios, even if they’ve never glanced at one of its quarterly earnings reports. “We’ve never seen another company have as big an impact” on overall market returns, says Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Just how popular has Apple become? It was among the top 10 holdings in more than 1,000 mutual funds last year, according to fund researcher Morningstar Inc. — up from just 11 in 2002, shortly after Apple introduced the device that started the gadget craze, the iPod. Overall, about one in four stock funds owns Apple…..

Read all about it at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-apple-ate-wall-street-2013-01-24