Apple Stock closes at all-time high, now 4th largest Market Cap in the US | Hacker News Reader

Apple Stock closes at all-time high, now 4th largest Market Cap in the US

edibleapple.com

28 pointsanderzole15 comments

Proof that you don't need to have market dominance to make a lot of money.

Apple dominates its' own market

Kinda interesting that Google's market cap is now higher than IBM's despite having 1/10th as many employees. I guess it sorta makes sense, since employees are costs and therefore should adversely affect the market cap.

In a similar vein, Wal-Mart (with its 2 million employees, 100 times more than Google) has a market cap of only $206B. On a good day, Apple could pass that and become #3.

Even accounting for employees being costs, though, the valuations seem like they must be based mainly on a prediction that either Google is going to grow a lot, or those other companies are going to shrink. Wal-Mart and IBM both make around 2x Google's annual profits, for example (around $13.5b each vs. $6.5b).

IBM's business relies on low-margin, hard to scale models like selling consulting hours or selling hardware.

Slight error: Berkshire Hathaway is currently 4th at $206B.

Berkshire is 5th with $194B (the A shares that is) http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=brka&d=t

Berkshire's market cap is $204.655B http://online.barrons.com/public/quotes/main.html?symbol=BRK...

However, the market cap is the A shares plus the B shares.

Ah that's the issue. Yahoo gives only class A (and doesn't show class B); Google just merges them.

So the "wisdom of the crowds" is that Apple is really onto something with the iPad? Or are people manipulating the market into excess optimism about Apple so they can cash in?

iPad has very little to do with it

Somehow though it has overtaken Google in the past few months. (Personally I am betting they'll converge again.. )

They have overtaken GOOG before.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10017015-92.html

Yes, but how long can it hold there?

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