5 Safer Ways To Buy AAPL Stock
In 2012, Wall Street watched the fireworks in disbelief as Apple (AAPL) cruised through a multi-month nosedive. It peaked at $700 in September 2012 then later declined an unthinkable 24% until it plunged bottomed out under $400.
The total damage to AAPL stock was around 45%. Now APPL stock is closer to $600 and its enormous market cap made it an outsized part of exchange-traded funds. If you want to ride in Apple for another charge of $700, it's still a double-edged sword.
The iShares U.S. Technology ETF (IYW) is the biggest buyer of AAPL stock. At almost $3 billion in assets. IYW (or ETF) is tethered to the Dow Jones U.S. Technology Index, verifying the who's who of American tech companies. Aside from AAPL stock, you also have Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL). Almost 67% of IYW's fund is in the top 10. IYW charges 0.45% in expenses, that's $45 per $10,000 of investment. The fund offers a small dividend yield of 1.11%.
Technology SPDR (XLK) by State Street Global Advisors is also bursting with AAPL stock and gives big nods toward MSFT and GOOG. At $13 billion in assets, XLK has other tech stocks such as communications and financial services industries unlike IYW. Even if it slightly underperformed the IYW, XLK offers a higher yield at 1.74% longer term and expenses are low at 0.18%.
If you want it cheap, Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) is one of the most affordable ways to invest in the tech sector. Apple stock makes up 14% of the VGT fund, followed by GOOG and MSFT stocks as well. VGT and IYW are very similar, except VGT is a bit more diverse. It has $4.27 billion in assets which is probably as a result of a small expense ratio at 0.14%. It also sports a 1% yield.
iShares Global Technology ETF (IXN) looks outside the U.S. for its tech holdings, across the globe. IXN's holdings include the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Germany. It also yields roughly 1%, but has the smallest assents at $677 million. Expenses are at 0.48%.
PowerShares QQQ Trust is another way to get heavy AAPL Stock, being the least tech-oriented fund but made up of Nasdaq's 100 largest non-financial stocks. Hodgepodge may have done the trick as QQQ beat out SPY and IYW. It also yields 1.1% in dividends with an expense ratio of only 0.2%.