Re:Apple closes trading with $700B+ market cap
by devnul3 on Tuesday February 10, 2015 @10:22PM
(#9031407)
The key phrase there was"non publicly traded company". By definition, non publicly traded companies don't have (stock) market capitalization, which is the value of all outstanding shares (stock).
We can all argue whether Airbnb is worth $2B or $6B and Uber $40+ Billion, but these valuations aren't made up. They follow accounting rules.
One primary example is mark to market. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market_accounting