NEW YORK–The Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday announced changes to its widely watched NASDAQ-100 Index–comprised of the hundred biggest non-financial companies trading on the Nasdaq–as 12 high flyers such as Google replaced laggards such as Sanmina-SCI.
Besides Google, whose shares have soared 113 percent this year, the companies said to joining the index were: Activision, Cadence Design Systems, CheckFree, Discovery Holding, Expedia, Monster Worldwide, NII Holdings, Nvidia, Patterson-UTI Energy, Red Hat and Urban Outfitters.
The changes, effective at the start of trading Dec. 19, are good news for shareholders in those companies, since many fund managers who track or try to recreate the index will be forced to buy these shares.
The NASDAQ-100 Tracking Stock, an exchange-traded fund better known as “cubes” due to its trading symbol, has been the most actively traded equity security listed in the U.S. The fund has amassed $20 billion in assets.
Nine international funds and 22 U.S. mutual funds have been linked to the index, which also serves as a benchmark for some 400 related options, futures and other products.
Meanwhile, 12 companies were kicked out of the index as their stock prices and market value fell.
Besides Sanmina, whose shares fell 50 percent this year, the companies announced as being removed from the index were: Career Education, Dollar Tree Stores, Intersil, Invitrogen, Level 3 Communications, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Molex, Novellus Systems, QLogic, Synopsys and Smurfit-Stone Container.
Nasdaq revises the index every December.
