Here at BGR, we’ve long been fascinated by the musings of Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, who seems to shift wildly back and forth as to whether Apple is doomed to catastrophic failure or primed for unparalleled success. One year ago, for instance, he declared that Apple would “disappear” and become “irrelevant” unless it released an Apple Watch by last May. More recently, Chowdhry predicted that Apple would sell 42 million Apple Watches and would have a highly unlikely 100,000 Apple Watch apps available at launch… not bad for a company that should have become irrelevant by now since it still hasn’t released the Apple Watch!
All of this leads us to Chowdhry’s reaction to Friday’s news that Apple would be replacing AT&T in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Per Fortune, it seems Chowdhry is not a fan of the move and he even thinks Apple should try to get out of joining the DJIA if at all possible.
“Apple joining Dow is extremely bad for Apple,” he explained. “Joining Dow takes the shine off the Apple and makes it a rotten Apple.Companies in Dow have historically symbolized companies which are boring, have zero innovation, complacent and are inching closer to irrelevance by the day, which is definitely not what Apple is all about. Apple should just refuse to join the Dow Index.”
It’s true that Exxon and Coca Cola don’t exactly scream “innovation,” but Microsoft is still a very innovative company, despite what its detractors say, and it’s been a Dow staple for years. Nike, meanwhile, isn’t just growing fat off its shoe sales but has been pioneering in recent years developing fitness bands. Similarly, Merck and Pfizer haven’t stopped coming out with new drugs despite being on the Dow, and Goldman Sachs is certainly innovative in its own right, although you can definitely debate whether its innovations are actually good things or not.
At any rate, we definitely applaud Chowdhry for once again giving us an entertaining missive to chuckle about and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.
