Apple Is Best-Performing Dow Stock of 2020

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 4, 11:12AM EST · Published Dec 26, 7:26AM EST

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Apple Is Best-Performing Dow Stock of 2020 — © Sean Rayford / Getty Images News via Getty Images

With four trading days left in 2020, the best performing Dow stock has already been determined. Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) share price has risen almost 80% this year. The DJIA is up 6%. No other component’s share performance among the 30 stocks is even close to Apple.

The run-up has made Apple the most valuable company in America with a market cap of $2.24 trillion. And, no other public corporation has a figure that is even close to that.

The sharp rise in price has several engines. The first of these is the iPhone 12. It is expected to sell better than any iPhone in years. Among the reasons is that it works on the new 5G superfast wireless networks, which have started to become the standard in the U.S., Europe, China, and Japan which are Apple’s largest markets. One research firm claims Apple will produce 96 million iPhones in the first half of next year.

Earlier this month, 24/7 Wall St. reported that based on the same source: “For all of next year, Apple has drawn up a preliminary forecast for 230 million iPhones, an increase of 20% compared with production in 2019 and near its record production of 231.5 million iPhones in 2015.”

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Two of Apple’s smaller lines of business have done extraordinarily well. When Apple reported its most recent earnings, Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, said: “Apple capped off a fiscal year defined by innovation in the face of adversity with a September quarter record, led by all-time records for Mac and Services.” In the quarter, Apple’s overall revenue was $65 billion, up from $64 billion in the same period of 2019. Mac revenue was $9 billion, up from $7 billion in the year-ago period. Services revenue was $14.5 billion, up from $12.5 billion.

Services revenue includes sales from iTunes, the App Store, Mac App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, AppleCare, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, according to MacRumors.

After several years in which iPhone sales increases lagged other Apple business lines, the company’s flagship is set to outperform over the current holiday quarter, and well into next year.

Apple’s earns are expected to be extraordinary over the next several quarters. Several securities analysts have price targets well above the $130 price level. Apple’s market cap could move as high as $3 trillion in 2021.

It is not a stretch to imagine that Apple could be the top-performing Dow stock next year.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.