In a note to clients — as noted by Apple 3.0 — Morgan Stanley analyst Kathy Huberty — says Apple’s institutional ownership fell -58 basis points quarter-over-quarter to 4.9% at the end of the March quarter.
Institutional ownership is the amount of a company’s available stock owned by mutual or pension funds, insurance companies, investment firms, private foundations, endowments or other large entities that manage funds on behalf of others. Basis points, otherwise known as “bps” or “bips,” are a unit of measure used in finance to describe the percentage change in the value or rate of a financial instrument. In the bond market, a basis point is used to refer to the yield that a bond pays to the investor.
While active ownership in Apple is still up 50 bps year-over-year, this is the largest sequential decline since 2013. Apple’s S&P 500 weighting fell 96 bps quarter-over-quarter, the largest sequential decrease since at least 2009, per Apple 3.0. As a result, the spread between Apple’s S&P 500 weighting and institutional ownership contracted 38 bps quarter-over-quarter to 0.86%, “implying that while investors are still underweight Apple shares, this gap has narrowed by ~30% since the fourth quarter of 2020.”
