7 ms·

Apple closes trading with $700B+ market cap

63 points by nerfhammer 12y ago

bane 12y ago
Here's a fun comparison. That's within spitting distance of the GDP (PPP) of all of South Korea around the year 2000.
zachrose 12y ago
For scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28currency%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28currency...
- jameshart 12y ago
  Wow - the closest number on that list is "Total assessed (taxable) market value of Manhattan real estate for FY 2014-2015" at $914.8 billion. That's the kind of order of magnitude of Apple's worth - one New York borough, containing the world's most valuable real estate. (Sorry, but can't resist adding: Given that it's worth 30% more than Apple, I guess that's why they call NYC the Big Apple...)
  - startupfounder 12y ago
    TIL Why NYC is called the Big Apple (Question is when will they switch names?)
    - rev_bird 12y ago
      They won't have to change, Apple will just become Bigger Apple.
  - hyperbovine 12y ago
    The Japanese imperial palace in the heart of Tokyo was once estimated to be worth more than California. (As in, the State of.) Bubbles are a funny thing.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
innguest 12y ago
It's called a bubble. Here's a company that sells grilled cheese out of 3 trucks, that has been valued at $100M: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-09/bubble-meet-25-million-grilled-cheese-truck http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-09/bubble-meet-25-mill... Now let's watch the words "worth" and "value" be thrown around recklessly. :)
- failed_ideas 12y ago
  The only thing on the planet Apple doesn't have enough money to buy is itself. We MAY be in a bubble, but this is in no way an indication of that.
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  Consumer interest & willingness to open their wallets might be currently inflated. But even a year ago, Apple had $137 billion in actual assets. Their P/B ratio is a somewhat high but not insane 5.7
- ceejayoz 12y ago
  > Here's a company that sells grilled cheese out of 3 trucks, that has been valued at $100M. With zero liquidity. http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GRLD/quote http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GRLD/quote indicates trading volume of 800 shares and their shares were $0.10 until January 28th, upon which someone started trading a few hundred shares a day at about $6. That's not a bubble, that's someone screwing with a tiny stock. Probably selling back and forth to themself.
  - hello_asdf 12y ago
    Excuse my ignorance here, but why would someone sell back and forth to themselves?
    - sukilot 12y ago
      Pump and dump scam
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
Keyframe 12y ago
The world’s largest company by market capitalization got a little bit bigger Tuesday. Shouldn't that be "..largest PUBLIC company by market cap..."? Isn't Saudi Aramco's value in trillions for example?
- abat 12y ago
  Market cap implies public company because by definition private companies are not traded publicly on a market. It's the same way start ups have "valuations" and not "market caps".
  - ryan_j_naughton 12y ago
    > private companies are not traded publicly on a market. Incorrect. They aren't traded on an exchange, but they are certainly traded in a market. A market is any situation where people buy and sell to one another. Venture capitalists certainly buy shares in private companies. Similarly, a private car dealership, private family restaurant, etc can (and often are) sold from the original owner to a new owner. Thus, a market exists. I think the term you are looking for is exchange. The distinction between a market and an exchange is an exchange creates more explicit rules on trading in order to make the goods traded commoditized. For example, instead of buying corn at my farmers market where the differences in corn might matter for both price and quality (local, organic, some farmer just happens to grow more delicious corn), when you buy agricultural commodities from Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), each contract is equivalent. X many bushes of corn at Y price. By making rules on quality and standardizing the goods/contracts/etc, an exchange helps to bring about price discovery and ensure the goods are priced correctly. But it isn't inherent that exchanges cause the true price to be found or that OTC[0] markets are inferior or less accurate. It depends on numerous factors for whether a share price is being valued correctly. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance)
    - ycombobreaker 12y ago
      Funny that you mention corn specifically, because all contracts are not delivered the same even on-exchange! The deliverable grade of corn is "#2 Yellow at contract Price, #1 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel premium #3 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel discount" per http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilseed/corn_contract_specifications.html http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilse... . Along these lines, I heard there were complaints in the UK's LIFFE market because excess rainfall was damaging French wheat crops, but even the poor crops were within the exchange's loose contract specifications. But I suppose this is a bit of a tangent. The takeaway is that everything is traded on a market somewhere, but there are different sizes and standards for markets. Private companies can have some number of institutional investors while still keeping reporting requirements low (IIRC Facebook ran into this limit before their IPO). Ergo, every company has a market cap, but companies with fewer investors/owners are harder to measure.
Shivetya 12y ago
damn, if marketing doesn't prove its worth with these numbers. Yes they make good products but its obvious their margins are so damn high because their marketing has convinced people that it is worth it. (iphone/mac/airport owner.... so yeah) Honestly though, I would love some other choices but they competition in general just sucks. For awhile android phones almost caught my attention but the pc world hasn't since my first 24 inch iMac. Tablet market is just, Apple.
- arthurcolle 12y ago
  I like my Kindle Fire HDX quite thoroughly so idk about that last statement.
- zanny 12y ago
  I swear by my Nexus tablets and I was one of the backers for the Jolla tablet. Nothing about an ipad or ipad mini is appealing to me, and the draconian lockdown and lack of control of my own hardware guarantees I will never own an Apple product. And in my daily life I do not see many ipads. Only amongst those so ignorant to think tablets = Apple in the same way they think computers = Windows. There are plenty of Android tablets out there in use, a lot of them are in businesses now due to the significantly lower cost to adopt $100 - $200 tablets over ipad minis, combined with developer fees and the hoops to jump through with xcode licenses and ios developer licenses and all that bullshit.
  - modfodder 12y ago
    So it is your opinion that the people who buy iPads do so only out of ignorance and none out of preference for Apple's product? In my daily life I see quite a few iPads, but rarely a Nexus, and then only amongst those that have severe psychological issues. Nothing from Google interests me with their insistence on seeing me as a slave to their income generating advertisements./s
- pasta_2 12y ago
  I love backhanded compliments about Apple's marketing. If marketing had the impact you seem to think it does, Samsung would be doing a whole lot better than they are.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- megablast 12y ago
  Yup, that is all it will take. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes for someone with a pen and paper.
kralko 12y ago
I wonder how much of the stock growth is due to the investor program (stocks buybacks), how much is linked to the stock split (making the stock more affordable and potentially more liquid)?

63 points by nerfhammer 12y ago

bane 12y ago

Here's a fun comparison. That's within spitting distance of the GDP (PPP) of all of South Korea around the year 2000.

For scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28currency%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28currency...

jameshart 12y ago
Wow - the closest number on that list is "Total assessed (taxable) market value of Manhattan real estate for FY 2014-2015" at $914.8 billion. That's the kind of order of magnitude of Apple's worth - one New York borough, containing the world's most valuable real estate. (Sorry, but can't resist adding: Given that it's worth 30% more than Apple, I guess that's why they call NYC the Big Apple...)
- startupfounder 12y ago
  TIL Why NYC is called the Big Apple (Question is when will they switch names?)
  - rev_bird 12y ago
    They won't have to change, Apple will just become Bigger Apple.
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  The Japanese imperial palace in the heart of Tokyo was once estimated to be worth more than California. (As in, the State of.) Bubbles are a funny thing.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

innguest 12y ago

It's called a bubble. Here's a company that sells grilled cheese out of 3 trucks, that has been valued at $100M: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-09/bubble-meet-25-million-grilled-cheese-truck http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-09/bubble-meet-25-mill... Now let's watch the words "worth" and "value" be thrown around recklessly. :)

failed_ideas 12y ago
The only thing on the planet Apple doesn't have enough money to buy is itself. We MAY be in a bubble, but this is in no way an indication of that.
sliverstorm 12y ago
Consumer interest & willingness to open their wallets might be currently inflated. But even a year ago, Apple had $137 billion in actual assets. Their P/B ratio is a somewhat high but not insane 5.7
ceejayoz 12y ago
> Here's a company that sells grilled cheese out of 3 trucks, that has been valued at $100M. With zero liquidity. http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GRLD/quote http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/GRLD/quote indicates trading volume of 800 shares and their shares were $0.10 until January 28th, upon which someone started trading a few hundred shares a day at about $6. That's not a bubble, that's someone screwing with a tiny stock. Probably selling back and forth to themself.
- hello_asdf 12y ago
  Excuse my ignorance here, but why would someone sell back and forth to themselves?
  - sukilot 12y ago
    Pump and dump scam
  - ceejayoz 12y ago

Keyframe 12y ago

The world’s largest company by market capitalization got a little bit bigger Tuesday. Shouldn't that be "..largest PUBLIC company by market cap..."? Isn't Saudi Aramco's value in trillions for example?

abat 12y ago
Market cap implies public company because by definition private companies are not traded publicly on a market. It's the same way start ups have "valuations" and not "market caps".
- ryan_j_naughton 12y ago
  > private companies are not traded publicly on a market. Incorrect. They aren't traded on an exchange, but they are certainly traded in a market. A market is any situation where people buy and sell to one another. Venture capitalists certainly buy shares in private companies. Similarly, a private car dealership, private family restaurant, etc can (and often are) sold from the original owner to a new owner. Thus, a market exists. I think the term you are looking for is exchange. The distinction between a market and an exchange is an exchange creates more explicit rules on trading in order to make the goods traded commoditized. For example, instead of buying corn at my farmers market where the differences in corn might matter for both price and quality (local, organic, some farmer just happens to grow more delicious corn), when you buy agricultural commodities from Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), each contract is equivalent. X many bushes of corn at Y price. By making rules on quality and standardizing the goods/contracts/etc, an exchange helps to bring about price discovery and ensure the goods are priced correctly. But it isn't inherent that exchanges cause the true price to be found or that OTC[0] markets are inferior or less accurate. It depends on numerous factors for whether a share price is being valued correctly. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance)
  - ycombobreaker 12y ago
    Funny that you mention corn specifically, because all contracts are not delivered the same even on-exchange! The deliverable grade of corn is "#2 Yellow at contract Price, #1 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel premium #3 Yellow at a 1.5 cent/bushel discount" per http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilseed/corn_contract_specifications.html http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/grain-and-oilse... . Along these lines, I heard there were complaints in the UK's LIFFE market because excess rainfall was damaging French wheat crops, but even the poor crops were within the exchange's loose contract specifications. But I suppose this is a bit of a tangent. The takeaway is that everything is traded on a market somewhere, but there are different sizes and standards for markets. Private companies can have some number of institutional investors while still keeping reporting requirements low (IIRC Facebook ran into this limit before their IPO). Ergo, every company has a market cap, but companies with fewer investors/owners are harder to measure.

Shivetya 12y ago

damn, if marketing doesn't prove its worth with these numbers. Yes they make good products but its obvious their margins are so damn high because their marketing has convinced people that it is worth it. (iphone/mac/airport owner.... so yeah) Honestly though, I would love some other choices but they competition in general just sucks. For awhile android phones almost caught my attention but the pc world hasn't since my first 24 inch iMac. Tablet market is just, Apple.

arthurcolle 12y ago
I like my Kindle Fire HDX quite thoroughly so idk about that last statement.
zanny 12y ago
I swear by my Nexus tablets and I was one of the backers for the Jolla tablet. Nothing about an ipad or ipad mini is appealing to me, and the draconian lockdown and lack of control of my own hardware guarantees I will never own an Apple product. And in my daily life I do not see many ipads. Only amongst those so ignorant to think tablets = Apple in the same way they think computers = Windows. There are plenty of Android tablets out there in use, a lot of them are in businesses now due to the significantly lower cost to adopt $100 - $200 tablets over ipad minis, combined with developer fees and the hoops to jump through with xcode licenses and ios developer licenses and all that bullshit.
- modfodder 12y ago
  So it is your opinion that the people who buy iPads do so only out of ignorance and none out of preference for Apple's product? In my daily life I see quite a few iPads, but rarely a Nexus, and then only amongst those that have severe psychological issues. Nothing from Google interests me with their insistence on seeing me as a slave to their income generating advertisements./s
pasta_2 12y ago
I love backhanded compliments about Apple's marketing. If marketing had the impact you seem to think it does, Samsung would be doing a whole lot better than they are.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

megablast 12y ago
Yup, that is all it will take. Shouldn't take more than 5 minutes for someone with a pen and paper.

kralko 12y ago

I wonder how much of the stock growth is due to the investor program (stocks buybacks), how much is linked to the stock split (making the stock more affordable and potentially more liquid)?