High-flying shares of Apple Inc and Tesla Inc surged again on Monday as stock splits took effect and attracted more buying from investors. Apple jumped over 4 per cent and Tesla rallied 10 per cent, elevating the electric car maker’s market capitalisation to over US$440 billion, making it more valuable than companies including Walmart and Johnson & Johnson. Apple split its stock 4-for-1, while Tesla split its stock 5-for-1, with both companies saying they aimed to make their shares more affordable to individual investors. Robinhood and other brokerages increasingly let customers buy fractions of individual shares, making the benefit of stock splits less obvious than in the past. Splits have become less common. Just three S&P 500 members announced splits in 2020, down from 12 in 2011, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Tesla’s made-in-China Model Y launch imminent The success of the splits for Apple and Tesla could lead CEOs of other companies with high-priced stocks to consider their own splits. Both Silicon Valley companies have massive followings among individual investors. In recent sessions, Apple and Tesla were the two most-traded stocks at Fidelity’s brokerage, with customers overwhelmingly buying. Tesla’s stock has surged over 70 per cent since its split was announced on August 11. Apple has jumped over 30 per cent since it announced its split on July 30, along with a blowout quarterly report. Trading at over US$2,000 on Friday on a split-adjusted basis, Tesla’s stock had among the highest price tags on Wall Street. Other companies with quadruple-digit stock prices included Amazon, at over US$3,400, Google-parent Alphabet, at over US$1,600, and Chipotle Mexican Grill, trading at over US$1,300. Apple’s previous stock split was 7-for-1 in 2014, and this month’s split was its fifth since going public in 1980. Apple and Tesla’s share splits applied to shareholders of record on August 24. Apple’s market capitalisation has surged above US$2 trillion, and it overtook Saudi Aramco as the world’s most valuable publicly listed company. Tesla’s stock has jumped almost 500 per cent this year, while shares of General Motors Co and Ford Motor Co fell due to fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.