Microsoft Charts: Higher Short Term

By L.A. Little of tatoday.com, author of Trade Like the Little Guy.

Top 10 Nasdaq-100 Holdings Company Name Symbol Weighting APPLE INC AAPL 15.8346% QUALCOMM INC QCOM 5.6880% MICROSOFT MSFT 5.6325% GOOGLE INC. GOOG 5.2198% CISCO SYS INC CSCO 3.0285% ORACLE CORP ORCL 2.8957% GILEAD SCIENCES GILD 2.5971% INTEL CP INTC 2.4083% TEVA PHARM INDS TEVA 2.3901% AMAZON.COM INC AMZN 2.3631% Source: Nasdaq

The Nasdaq 100 is the tail that currently wags the Nasdaq Composite dog.

This inescapable fact is a direct result of how the Nasdaq 100 is calculated. The calculation is based on a modified market capitalization weighted index formula and the result is that just four companies are moving the entire index.

The top 10 holdings as of Friday are shown in the above chart. If you do the math, the top four companies account for a whopping 32.3749% of the entire index. Yes, four companies account for almost one-third of the 100-company index.

Over the past couple of weeks, we looked at two of the four companies. What we found was that Google(GOOG Quote) was no buy, but instead was a hold as long as it held above the $520 area on a closing basis.

Apple(AAPL Quote), like Google, is in a suspect uptrend as well. If and when it trades and closes below the $185.55 swing point, Apple too is in trouble.

Today we turn our attention to Microsoft(MSFT Quote) and Tuesday we'll examine Qualcomm(QCOM Quote). That should give us a good picture of what are probably the most important domestic equities currently.