Amazon is now the USA's most valuable publicly-traded company by market value:
Amazon's ended trading Monday with a market value of about $797 billion, compared with Microsoft's $783 billion. Apple, which had been part of a close three-way race for the seat, is now down to about $702 billion in market value after plunging last week on the news of its weak iPhone sales. Google parent company Alphabet has surpassed Apple with a market value of about $748 billion.
Previously: Microsoft Overtakes Amazon as Second Most Valuable U.S. Company
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Microsoft just leaped over Amazon as second most valuable U.S. company
Microsoft overtook Amazon as second most valuable U.S. company on Friday after investors punished Jeff Bezos' e-commerce behemoth for a disappointing quarterly earnings report, wiping $65 billion off the online retailer's market capitalization.
Apple still tops the list at over $1 trillion after crossing that threshold in September. Microsoft's market capitalization was Wall Street's highest in late 1998 through early 2000 before the dot-com bubble burst.
Amazon's shares dropped 7 percent, the most in nearly three years after its holiday season sales outlook missed targets, fanning concerns that Wall Street's tech darlings are finally starting to face stronger competition.
Microsoft fell a more modest 2 percent in a broad technology sell-off that was also driven by a weaker-than-expected report from Google-parent Alphabet.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:20AM
You don't have to ignore this one (but you can!).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:22AM (8 children)
It's not like they don't know that product sales ultimately decline. Surely they've got _something_ planned for that billion dollar new Austin campus.
Today and yesterday I listed dozens of locations where Apple is hiring college student customer support. I contemplated not doing so but concluded that AC would be a perfect fit were he to get his head out of his ass. Tomorrow I'll start listing shops in other countries so as to accommodate any desire AC might have to travel.
Fuck MDC
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:33AM (7 children)
Personally, I'd look at whoever's een doing massive share buybacks (with associated pump to the price) and not had a monster crash (9% in a day for Apple, for example), and then short them like buggery.
(Actually, I wouldn't - it's not a truly free and open market, it's highly manipulated, and I simply don't want to play that game, even if the potential gains are tempting. And also, I'd never want anything I said to be considered financial advice, except perhaps to be very wary of playing in volatile markets with anything more than you can afford to lose. And trust noone.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday January 08 2019, @09:13AM (6 children)
OTOH, you could just hypothetically perform as you suggest - and be astounded by how wrong you were. May I challenge you to post your suggestions on your journal for everyone to check up on?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 08 2019, @10:24AM (5 children)
Skin in the game? Yes. I'm trying to BTFD as we speak. If you feel tempted to dabble, then the online marketplace with the lowest trading overheads (half a percent at low volumes) and way way cheapest storage fees (about a quarter of anyone else's fees) is bullionvault, and if you use my account id as a referer, I'd be most grateful: http://www.bullionvaultaffiliate.com/ASDF0000/en
I don't believe it's going to the moon, but that's not what I'm looking for - I do want a safe haven investment in simple terms - I'm wary of pretty much everything else. Even if it's heading south, it has enough volatility to be possible to short a profit.
My biggest single investment, however, was in a local brewery that is run by people who have a proven track record at getting the business side of things right, and who have employed extremely skillful brewing/lab staff. They're exporting all round the world already, have a tip-top reputation, and are expanding as they can't supply the current demand. No divvies for a while (lots of loans to pay off due to expansion), but I'm considering that a medium-to-long term growth investment. Of course, I was at the right place at the right time in order to be able to be part of that - so the only recommendation I can map that onto is "be lucky".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:00AM (2 children)
For those who aren't quite following all this financial talk, this illustration [wp.com] may help to clarify what's being discussed.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:52AM (1 child)
If you're not familiar with the concept of debasement, for example, you're nearly 2000 years behind the times - you've got some catch-up reading to do.
Do not think for one second that I have any respect for the people who have constructed the modern world this way, quite the opposite, I abhor some of the instruments that have been invented in my lifetime, some are wholly designed around relying on bigger idiots, for example. Madoff wasn't the bad egg, he was just playing the same game as everyone else, but badly enough to not get away with it. However, it's pertinent to understand how the system is constructed, and some of the argot that those who work in the field use to describe what's going on. Some of the terms originally had some intrinsic sense, but now there's no real market of real things the abstraction has made them seem like gobbledygook. Read up on the origins, and you'll realise plenty of it is not mystical incantations. (But plenty is too.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 08 2019, @04:57PM
Actually, I believe that debasing currency is nearly as old as currency. IIUC it dates back to the times before coining money was practiced...though in that time it was mainly unofficial actions of officials. Shaving bars of gold that had the king's seal on them, mixing in other metals, etc.
OTOH, the king's seal was important as a guarantee of purity, because the open market was full of people who would give short weight or mixtures of metals.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 08 2019, @12:52PM (1 child)
Why invest in bullion when you can invest in gold miners?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:31AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 08 2019, @06:47AM (5 children)
Would not a nice and soothing intellectual aristarchus submission be preferable to this Musk level pump-and-dump stock market manipulation fare, of which SoylentNews should be free? I mean, we are all either communists or true libertarians (if there could be such a thing), so the pumping-dumping thing is really unnecessary, unless a Yak is involved, and shaving, but, really, have we gone that far? Really?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:03AM (1 child)
Trump.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:09AM
The Trump market is decidedly down, as the spawn have borked the hotel business, and real estate is only real if it is imaginary, as in speculative. So expect a crash. It is inevitable. Make your market decisions based on my wisdom. At least I am not Cramer!
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:46AM
Amazon suck, and Bezos is evil, herp derp.
I prefer Apple because it's shinier.
etc. etc.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:02AM (1 child)
Trump-and-dump,
Dump-a-Trump,
Trump-a-lump,
Hump-a-trump,
Hefffalump!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:53AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 08 2019, @07:12AM (1 child)
And possibly, I will. Because he's got a huge antitrust problem. Because he's controlling so much. Amazon is controlling so much of what they are doing. He's using the Washington Post, which is peanuts. He's using that for political purposes to save Amazon in terms of taxes and in terms of antitrust.
Every hour we're getting calls from reporters from the Washington Post asking RIDICULOUS questions. And I will tell you, this is owned as a toy by Jeffrey Bezos. Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise. He's using the Washington Post for power so that the politicians in Washington don't tax Amazon like they should be taxed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:24AM
About all the pages in Trump enterprises tax files?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:11AM (7 children)
If you look at their price-to-earning ratios, though, Microsoft is 25-ish and Apple is 15-ish, meaning that their stock valuation is something like 15-25 times their yearly earnings. Amazon, on the other hand ... I'll let you google it. Frankly, I don't know how Amazon sustains a price like that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:16AM
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/070214/how-can-pricetoearnings-pe-ratio-mislead-investors.asp [investopedia.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:33AM (2 children)
Except that,
1. MSFT is growing via Azure and cloud. Apple not.
2. Apple relies on gadgets to end-users... market saturation?
3. Amazon, have you seen their growth? No sign of slowing down. Amazon is becoming *the* marketplace to buy things online. Even bigger with cloud business than MSFT.
So yeah, you can look at P/E ratios and think you know something, but in reality, P/E doesn't tell you that much. You can't compare Amazon with Apple on P/E ! Might as well compare a grapefruit to banana based on juice value, but grapefruits will always remain much more niche than bananas. There is money in the bananas!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:24PM
It is true that it it might be hard to compare a decades old company (Apple, MS) with a relative new comer (Amazon) and expect that P/E should match.
The current heavies are bumping their heads on market saturation, while Amazon has room to grow.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday January 08 2019, @08:14PM
Speaking as a person who has given Apple well into five figures for Macs, I'd be perfectly happy to give them more, too... if they went back to the Mac Pro case/system design ca. approximately 2012. Or better. Though I have trouble imagining what that would be like, because that system design was damn near perfect AFAIAC. Upgrade the motherboard, provide more slots (or bigger slots) for RAM, throw a few drivers in there for up to date graphics cards... oh yeah, I'll buy, and how.
I only stopped giving them money because the designers shit themselves and fell in it with that non-rackable, desk-wart-driven, non-internally-expandable round POS they tried to pass off as a professional bit of hardware. I was not taken in.
They have since said they were going to do better [buzzfeednews.com], but the silence since then has been pretty consistent.
They did come out with a better, though still unfortunately borked, Mac Mini that I almost wanted, except for the soldered-in SSD storage and absurdly difficult-to-access interior. So again, they missed getting me to hand them money.
It seems like they don't care much for the Mac users. That's okay. My 2010 12/24 core Mac Pro is still purring along nicely. Maybe I'll haul myself over to EBay and grab a 2012 version if they bork this again, or they simply make me wait too long.
My message to Apple is simply this: "If you bork it, they will stop coming."
--
If the earth was flat...
...cats would have pushed everything off it by now.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:48PM
A high P/E in Amazon's case means a lot of R&D spending, it doesn't necessarily mean that their stock is overvalued, if you think they're investing in the right innovations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 08 2019, @03:49PM
Amazon finally has earnings?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 08 2019, @11:36PM
If Amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag. The Washington Post scam is saving it!
(Score: 2) by corey on Wednesday January 09 2019, @12:59AM
As above.
Wasn't Apple worth $1tn recently?