Google cracks Nasdaq top 100
Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 12, 2005
NEW YORK – High-flying Internet company Google Inc. and 11 other companies were added Monday to the Nasdaq 100, the Nasdaq Stock Market’s index of the 100 largest nonfinancial companies listed on the market.
The Nasdaq 100 is a widely used benchmark for a variety of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. The Nasdaq 100 Index Tracking Stock, better known as the QQQ, is one of the most popular index-linked stocks in the world and is a component of hundreds of mutual funds and pension funds. The trust that runs QQQ has more than $20 billion under management.
Google, which went public in August 2004 and now has a market capitalization of $128.3 billion, was widely expected to join the Nasdaq 100 after seeing its stock price more than quadruple over the past 16 months.
The other 11 companies included in the index Monday were NII Holdings Inc., Expedia Inc., Patterson-UTI Energy Inc., NVIDIA Corp., Urban Outfitters Inc., Cadence Design Systems Inc., Activision Inc., RedHat Inc., Monster Worldwide Inc., CheckFree Corp. and Discovery Holding Co.
To make room for the newcomers, the Nasdaq 100 is removing 12 other companies that have fallen out of the top 100 nonfinancial companies listed on the Nasdaq. Those companies are Career Education Corp., Dollar Tree Stores Inc., Intersil Corp., Invitrogen Corp, Level 3 Communications Inc., Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., Molex Inc., Novellus Systems Inc., QLogic Corp., Sanmina-SCI Corp., Synopsys Inc. and Smurfit-Stone Container Corp.
Inclusion within the Nasdaq 100 is considered a boon to the new companies’ stock prices, as the Nasdaq 100 trust and other funds that use the index as a benchmark are quick to buy up the newcomers for their portfolios. Likewise, those companies jettisoned from the index often see their stock prices fall.
