What happened
Shares of tech giant Alphabet (GOOG 0.15%)(GOOGL 0.55%) continued to march higher on Monday on moderately positive news out of Wall Street.
Up 2% in 10:15 a.m. ET trading, and up as much as 3.1% earlier in the day, Alphabet shares touched a 52-week high -- and you can probably thank Jefferies for that.
NASDAQ: GOOG
Key Data Points
So what
The London Stock Exchange Group is undergoing its annual "rebalancing" of its several FTSE Russell stock indices, you see. Decisions about how much to weight the various stocks within the various indexes won't be final until June 23, and won't open for trading until June 26. But already, investment banks such as Jefferies are starting to opine on what the effects might be for investors.
In the case of the Russell 1000 Growth index in particular, Jefferies notes that the share of communications services stocks such as Alphabet on the index will increase by 3.4%, as StreetInsider reports today. Jefferies further predicts that this will increase "buying pressure" on Alphabet stock -- presumably driving up the price as funds and ETFs that mimic the Russell index buy more Alphabet stock to match the new weighting.
Now what
In short, this is not fundamentally good news for Alphabet. It's not anything that affects the business, but simply an observation about a potentially beneficial change in trading patterns for the stock.
Speaking of fundamentals, though, it's worth pointing out that at a valuation of 25.2 times free cash flow and 26.6 times trailing earnings, and with a long-term projected earnings growth rate of 17%, Alphabet isn't egregiously expensive. The average stock on the S&P 500 right now costs 24.3 times earnings, after all, and the average long-term earnings growth rate in that group is in the low teens. I'd argue that Google with its 85%-plus global market share in desktop search, and its 96%-plus market share in mobile search, makes Alphabet a much better-than-average stock.
The stock's not what I would call "cheap," exactly, but relative to most everything else out there, it still looks like a relative bargain.
