5 ms·
The Mississippi Company was never really worth $6.5T in any meaningful sense. Unlike Dutch East India, Mississippi was purely a speculative bubble. It only hit
by caymanjim 8y ago
The Mississippi Company was never really worth $6.5T in any meaningful sense. Unlike Dutch East India, Mississippi was purely a speculative bubble. It only hit that value for a few weeks at the end before the whole thing imploded.
- dredmorbius 8y agoWhat is value?
- rejschaap 8y agoIn the article they seem to use the maximum attained market capitalization during its existence indexed to current day dollars.
- ekianjo 8y agoThat's not a good definition of value if you enter into a phase of speculation.
- anonymous5133 8y agoHe never said it was a good definition of value.
- dredmorbius 8y agoWhat's a better one?
- dredmorbius 8y agoAre markets fair, efficient, omniscient, and/or rational? What alternatives exist for defining value? What do we mean by value?
- dalbasal 8y agoSouth sea company too. That said, you could make a similar case about apple. If you measure by dividends, I think the VOC's lead over all those companies grows by a lot.
- caymanjim 8y agoApple's value isn't just dividends. They have literally hundreds of billions in cash, about 25% of their market cap. They have vast other assets, both material and otherwise (the brand alone is worth real money). Their revenue is over $300B per year, and net profit is nearly $100B. And they post numbers like this year after year. Apple's value is real and obvious, and given the liquidity and sustained numbers, it's also correct. There's no bubble component at all.