Apple's weight in the S&P 500 index has dropped to a new low since 2021

As of 2024, Apple's stock price has cumulatively fallen by about 10.5%, resulting in its weight in the S&P 500 index dropping to around 5.7%, hitting a new low since June 2021. In contrast, the weight reached over 7.7% in mid-2023. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a series of attacks, accusing Apple of violating antitrust laws. Apple's stock price plummeted over 4% on the same day, marking its worst single-day performance since August last year, with a market value "bleeding" $110 billion in a day, faring much worse than the overall U.S. stock market. By Thursday, U.S. stocks had risen for four consecutive days, with the S&P, Dow, Nasdaq, and Nasdaq 100 all hitting record highs. The U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple for exploiting its monopoly position in the smartphone market to harm consumers, developers, and competitor companies, resulting in an "astronomical valuation." The entire Apple ecosystem supports Apple's monopoly, and the possibility of seeking to split Apple's business cannot be ruled out. In addition, reports suggest that the EU will investigate Apple and Alphabet-C for charging fees to app developers, potentially imposing heavy fines. 2024 is proving to be a challenging year for Apple. In addition to the antitrust crackdown from regulators mentioned above, concerns about Apple's demand are escalating, as well as its relative lag in the AI competition. Just over ten days into the new year, Microsoft's market value surpassed Apple's, making it the world's largest company by market capitalization. Meanwhile, NVIDIA, a leader in the AI boom, continues to see its market value rise, steadily approaching Apple. At the beginning of this month, Guo Mingchi, an analyst who understands Apple the best and works at TF International Securities, stated that the previous market consensus for Apple's shipments in 2024 was 220-225 million units, but it has now started to be revised downwards, approaching his earlier prediction of 200 million units. If Apple fails to introduce AI services that exceed market expectations this year, NVIDIA's market value is likely to surpass Apple's.