Apple hit a milestone this week, becoming the first company to top a trillion dollars in market capitalization. How about that?
Just for fun, let’s look back at what was the conventional wisdom was, in many of these cases, just a few weeks ago.
“Amazon Will Be the First Trillion-Dollar Company, Not Apple.”
That’s Luke Lango being wrong over at InvestorPlace.
“Amazon will be the first company worth $1 trillion, NYU’s Scott Galloway says.”
Wrong, perfessor.
“Amazon Will Be The First Company To Reach A Market Cap Of $1 Trillion.”
Way to be wrong, MF Capital.
“Investors think Amazon will beat Apple to become the first trillion dollar company, poll shows.”
An online poll that’s wrong? Now The Macalope has seen everything.
“Amazon Will Be First Trillion Dollar Stock – Forrester Analyst.”
Not the first time someone at Forrester has been wrong about Apple.
Were you trying to be wrong, Ben Schachter? Because, if so, mission accomplished.
So good work, everyone. Nailed it again.
Of course, none of this matters. Amazon will get there. And it’s still a remarkably successful company, just like Apple is.
To the horny one, this race to a trillion was all a lot of nonsense. The Macalope’s attitude can be summed up by the first two sentences of this tweet by Chris Espinoza:
Market capitalization is a fiction, it’s just the product of two numbers and has no bearing to realizable value. But some fictions are thrilling nonetheless.
So, yeah, these are just numbers. Like five. Eleven. And umptillion. Niner. eleventy-six. They don’t really mean much. Particularly the ones that are not actual numbers.
Also, and maybe it’s just the Macalope’s imagination, but the 9 percent jump in Apple’s share price this week that got it up over a trillion dollars in valuation isn’t based on some big news about the company’s business. Sure, Apple reported solid results this week (again), but the results were the kind that analysts could just as easily have mined for things to complain about like they usually do. Instead, the company got a nice bump the day after its quarterly conference call and then it just snowballed, as if investors noticed it was getting really close to a trillion dollars and just wanted to be part of the party. It’s like when you go out and swear you’re going to take it easy tonight so you can get up early and go to the gym tomorrow but Gary says “Should we do some shots? Let’s do some shots.” And the next thing you know it’s 4 a.m. and the Lyft driver is unceremoniously dumping you on your doorstep.
Stupid Gary.
The Macalope isn’t trying to take away from Apple’s accomplishment but just weeks ago, everyone was insisting it would be Amazon, not Apple. Now we’re all celebrating because—surprise—Apple managed to do it even with a P/E ratio more than 200 points less than Amazon’s. For those of us who spend their days having to sigh and remind people Apple’s actually doing pretty well instead of being perpetually on the verge of going out of business, this all seems a little obvious.