Re:Apple becomes first U.S. company to reach a $2T market cap
by gruturo on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @12:24PM
(#24212212)
You are not going to produce a tear in the fabric of space-time by running a similar comparison, you'd simply be wrong, and life will go on as usual.
GDP is an aggregated annual "earning", a market capitalization is the value of all the outstanding shares of an entity, not a periodic earning.
A more meaningful comparison would be Apple's annual earnings ($260B, still quite a lot of money) vs a country's GDP, or Apple's market cap ($2T) vs the value of an entire country, rather than their latest GDP.
"They're worth $2T, but they didn't make $2T this year, they made $260B".
GDP is an aggregated annual "earning", a market capitalization is the value of all the outstanding shares of an entity, not a periodic earning.
A more meaningful comparison would be Apple's annual earnings ($260B, still quite a lot of money) vs a country's GDP, or Apple's market cap ($2T) vs the value of an entire country, rather than their latest GDP.
"They're worth $2T, but they didn't make $2T this year, they made $260B".