Microsoft hits $2T market value
seattletimes.comI can't help but think this is in part due to devaluing of the dollar due to the massive quantitative easing and stimulus (see it visualized in an economic infographic linked below). The amount of money flowing in the economy has to go somewhere and a lot of it is finding it's way into the stock market. Thus, we see a record number of IPOs this year (not seen since the dot-com era) as well, and some interpret this as an eminent "SELL" signal.
https://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_stimulus_packag...
Market SELL Signals Start to Pile Up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xmYeJEHsA
For reference, the total value of US household financial wealth is ~$100tn.
You can explain the rise in the value of a small group of tech companies in terms of the large increase in cash balances (as a result of money printing, fiscal stimulus, lower household expenditure) but, even then, the value of the stock market as a percentage of US wealth has only been as high at three other times: 1968 and 1999 (both times where the market folded into itself, and there were "must-own" stocks that blew up horribly).
Mathematically, it is not possible for this to keep going. MSFT does not produce anywhere near enough cashflow to "pay for" the increase. Eventually, people run out of other assets to sell to buy stocks.
The % of household wealth that can go towards stocks is trending higher. ETFs make investing easier than ever. But the ratio will still, logically, have to fall before it rises again.
It is incredible that it is going to happen again. Two huge bubbles within twenty years of each other. Incredible.
Apr. 25, 2019: Microsoft is now a $1 trillion company
June 22, 2021: Microsoft hits $2T market value
With hyperinflation coming from all the freshly printed money there will be many more companies crashing valuation barriers in the near future.
wasnt very long ago that everyone was freaking about how crazy it was that either Microsoft or Apple would be the first trillion dollar company. And how insane it was that a company could be worth a trillion. Now a handful of companies have well exceeded that level (or more than doubled it) in a few short years..
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/microsoft-will-be-a-trillion...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18515623/microsoft-worth-...
Trillion is the new billion. At some point this will hit Main Street too.
Soon, we'll all be running 4-minute miles :)
It would be nice to get a more frequent and more transparent valuation on global wealth than the credit Suisse annual report. Then we can just follow the monetary unit which is just a ratio to the total number. So microsoft is approximately 0.4% currently. This number is essentially independent of inflation.
Seeing that the source is the Seattle Times reminds me that, years ago, I heard that Microsoft had produced 10,000 millionaires.
I wonder how many more it has produced since then?
I suspect a lot, but not just Microsoft, all the FAANG companies have minted a lot of millionaires. If you ever browse the /r/FatFIRE sub-reddit you'll read a lot of stories of how much some of the folks at FAANG are making and their total net worth (granted there are also some non-FAANG and non-tech folks on that sub.)
When MSFT hit $1T I thought there is no way this is sustainable. I thought the stock would definitely stabilize somewhere below that level. How very wrong I was.
Give it another 20-40 years and the world will have the first trillionaire person. 4% inflation over 40 years multiplies the money amount by about 4.8x.
Bill Gates owned 49% of MSFT in 2007. He could have already hit 1 trillion by doing nothing.
Supposedly he owned 49% when they went public in 1986, down to 24% in 1996, down to 1.3% in 2017, for anyone interested.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16148370/bill-gates-micro...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-gates-idUSBREA4...
Thank you, I misremembered when he started divesting. I thought he maintained his shares until halfway through he Ballmer CEOship.
same. having read through microsoft’s horrifying open source code i thought they were doomed long term (they still might be). but either the market can stay irrational longer than you and i can stay solvent (and it will fail eventually), or it doesn’t matter that an implementation is so awful, software is so profitable in the limit that horrible coding practices are irrelevant.
Time for a two minute silence for the genius who predicted in 2008 that "microsoft is dead".
Thank god though, he's not into vc or tech related business, otherwise his utterlack of insight and foresight into markets would have gotten him kicked.
Who said that? Guess it’s not as famous as Michael Dell’s 1997 advice to Apple
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cultofmac.com/448147/today-...
You can search in quotes, and you'll suddently realise his genius.