Today, Apple saw its market cap pass the $3 trillion threshold. The iPhone maker has reached that landmark before but has never managed to hang on to it through the end of a trading day.
But this morning, with its shares up about 1.4% and a significant $20 billion to $30 billion above the milestone, it seems the company is on pace to finally pull it off.
Less than five years ago, the “Big Five” — Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft — was worth a combined $3 trillion. It’s striking how much of a difference a few years can make.
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Flying somewhat underneath the radar in tech and startup land is just how far technology stocks have rebounded this year. As CNBC wrote this morning, the Nasdaq’s performance in the first half of 2023 could “be the strongest for the index since 1983.” For startups, the rising value of tech stocks is slowly lifting revenue multiples, which reduces the pressure on future fundraising because their public market comparable companies are now worth more.
Apple has certainly benefited from this recent recovery. Its shares rose a little more than 45.5% so far this year as of Thursday’s close.
While Apple’s ascent to this milestone is notable, there’s been a greater reshuffling in the ranks of the biggest tech stocks. It’s time to update our acronyms and understand what the required changes tell us about the state of the world.
De-FAANGing the Big Five
The tech industry is too broad to discuss collectively. This is doubly true today as previously tech-forward methods of doing business, like e-commerce and mobile, have become the norm, expanding the list of “tech” companies to ludicrous breadth.
