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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.

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South 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.

Apple'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.

What is value?

In the article they seem to use the maximum attained market capitalization during its existence indexed to current day dollars.

That's not a good definition of value if you enter into a phase of speculation.

He never said it was a good definition of value.

What's a better one?

Are markets fair, efficient, omniscient, and/or rational?

What alternatives exist for defining value?

What do we mean by value?

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