Of all the earnings surprises from last week, none was bigger than Apple's (AAPL)

Of all the earnings surprises from last week, none was bigger than Apple's (AAPL). Chris Weston details the earnings beat in an earlier post, but I want to focus on the 7-for-1 stock split. On the surface, a stock split doesn't seem like a huge deal, however, in Apple's case, the split could result in its inclusion in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. You see, because of the weighting method of the DJIA, stocks with large share prices have too heavy an impact on the overall price. If Apple gets added to the DJIA post-split, it will have to be included in several funds that are meant to track the movements of the closely watched index. This could result in another flood of buying in Apple stock, and push the shares even higher.