Apple Becomes Most Valuable Publicly-Traded Stock Ever

Milestones for Apple's stock are falling rapidly in recent days, with another strong performance today pushing Apple past Microsoft for the title of most valuable publicly-trade stock ever, a distinction Microsoft has held since December 1999.

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Microsoft's market capitalization peaked on December 30, 1999, reaching an intraday high of $119.94 per share. With Microsoft having documented 5,160,024,593 outstanding shares as of October 31, 1999 in its quarterly earnings report, the company would have had a market capitalization of $618.89 billion on December 30.

Apple's most recent quarterly filing listed 937,406,000 outstanding shares as of July 13, 2012, and with the company's stock price hitting $660.73 today, its market capitalization reached $619.37 billion.

While Apple now holds the all-time market capitalization record in terms of raw numbers, accounting for inflation would still allow Microsoft to retain the title by a fairly wide margin. In inflation-adjusted terms, Microsoft's $618.89 market capitalization in December 1999 would be equivalent to roughly $842.5 billion in today's dollars.

Apple's market capitalization title is also subject to several other caveats, perhaps most notably being PetroChina's trillion dollar market cap it achieved when it launched for trading on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2007. That figure comes with its own qualifications, however, as PetroChina is a government-dominated firm that saw only 2% of its shares being made available on the Shanghai exchange. Trading in PetroChina shares on the Hong Kong exchange and American depositary receipts on the New York Stock Exchange never supported the trillion dollar valuation the company received on the Shanghai exchange.

Update: Apple's stock closed at $665.15 today, giving the company a market capitalization of $623.5 billion.

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Top Rated Comments

nepalisherpa Avatar
161 months ago
I wish I could go back in time and buy a bunch of Apple's stocks! :(
Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
bbeagle Avatar
161 months ago
.... but but but that's because ummm.... there is no Android stock on the stock market, and ummmm... because if there was, Apple stock would probably be like NEGATIVE 660 in value instead of positive 600. Yep, that's the ticket... and it's all fanboy sheep who buy the stock anyways, and there will be a crash and correction soon, and... and.... :rolleyes:
Score: 20 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sbrhwkp3 Avatar
161 months ago
Too bad Steve didn't make it to see this day. I'm sure he'd be beaming with pride. One hell of a success story. :apple:
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chrmjenkins Avatar
161 months ago
got in at $11.21:) but only have 50 shares left:(
Shucks, you only have $33,020.50 in apple stock, a 5891% return on investment.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chrmjenkins Avatar
161 months ago
It's mind boggling to think that, at the time, Microsoft was almost exclusively a software company and its most well received OSes of late, XP and Windows 7, hadn't even been launched. We're talking Windows 98 and 98 SE here :eek:

Practical value of this news story: none. Like every other stock milestone announcement.
The practical value of nearly every story on here is 0. It's a rumors site, not a gardening how-to site.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pandamonia Avatar
161 months ago
One big bubble ready to burst.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)