FTSE Russell announced a preliminary list of changes to its indexes on Friday after the market closed—and some Big Tech names are being reclassified.
Google parent Alphabet and Advanced Micro Devices were among the largest stocks that will be removed from the Russell 1000 Value Index. That means those stocks will move to pure growth status by FTSE Russell’s standard.
Apple and Microsoft, on the other hand, will join the value index—and move from pure growth classification to a blend of growth and value.
Micron Technology and Sandisk will be removed from the value index and added to the Russell 1000 Growth Index, thanks to the continued strength in semiconductor and hardware stocks amid ongoing demand driven by artificial intelligence.
The list released Friday is preliminary, and will be finalized June 18 before the reconstitution takes effect on June 29.
Analysts had expected Amazon.com, whose revenue growth has slowed in recent years, to be classified as purely value, after being labeled part growth and part value.
“We estimate to be 100% Value,” Jefferies’ equity research team wrote about Amazon back in March.
FTSE Russell did not mention Amazon in its comments about the growth and value indexes.
The classification may sound like a technicality, but it matters because hundreds of exchange-traded funds and mutual funds base their allocations on the indexes’ classifications. So a rebalancing could lead to massive shifts in those funds’ holdings.
And that in turn, could lead to some interesting price fluctuations for the impacted stocks.