Shares of Google (NasdaqGM: GOOG) raced to a new all-time high during Thursday’s after-hours session after the Internet search giant reported fourth-quarter EPS of $12.01 on revenue of $16.86 billion. Analyst expected a profit of $12.21 a share on revenue of $16.75 billion.
The news sent the stock soaring, positioning it for a run to $1,200 as soon as today. At these levels, some investors have turned to exchange traded funds as a way of participating in some of Google’s upside.
There are some ETFs that are chock full of triple-digit, or in Google’s case quadruple-digit, darlings and the seemingly never-ending run higher in Google’s market value ensures the stock will become increasingly important to the price action of these ETFs going forward. [Triple-Digit Divas Found in These ETFs]
“The momentous rise in market capitalization (calculated of course by stock price multiplied by shares outstanding) over the past quarter in GOOG and it’s rising weighting in several giant market cap based indexes (GOOG now carries a 1.90% weighting in the S&P 500 Index and ranks as the third largest holding behind XOM and AAPL, and it is the second largest weighting in the well-known Nasdaq 100 Index at 7.85%,” said Street One Financial Vice President Paul Weisbruch in an email exchange with ETF Trends.
As of Wednesday, Google was tied with Microsoft (NasdaqGM: MSFT) as the second-largest holding in the PowerShares QQQ (NasdaqGS: QQQ), the Nasdaq 100 tracking ETF. Google accounts for 7.85% of QQQ’s weight, or 370 basis points less than the weight commanded by Apple (NasdaqGM: AAPL), but Google’s impact on ETFs is not confined to QQQ.
As of Wednesday, Google was the second-largest holding in the Technology Select Sector SPDR (NYSEArca: XLK), the second-biggest U.S. sector ETF, at a weight of 9.33%. The iShares U.S. Technology ETF (NYSEArca: IYW) devotes almost 11% to Google while the stock is the largest holding in the First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund (NYSEArca: FDN) at nearly 10% of that ETF’s weight.