Microsoft rose 2.2% to a market value of $ 2.49 trillion and Apple fell 1.8% after reporting fourth quarter revenue.
from and Bloomberg
Published on Oct 29, 2021
The slump in Apple Inc. shares on Friday caused Microsoft Corp. catapulted to the position of the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization.
Apple was down 1.8% after fourth-quarter sales were below analysts’ average, giving the iPhone maker a market value of $ 2.46 trillion. Microsoft rose 2.2% to hit a market value of $ 2.49 trillion, overtaking Apple after earning it for November 11 earlier this week.
“If you are looking for security in technology, it seems to me that Microsoft is probably a safer choice than Apple,” said Michael Matousek, head trader at US Global Investors, in a telephone interview. “If there was an economic downturn, I would expect Microsoft to be better off because its products are diversified across more companies.”
The last time Microsoft dethroned Apple was in the first half of 2020, when investors flocked to growth stocks amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Microsoft posted its best weekly profit since November.
In June, Microsoft made its place in the history books as only the second publicly traded US company to reach a market value of $ 2 trillion. Its stocks outperformed Apple and Amazon.com Inc. this year, driven by long-term growth in earnings and revenue, as well as expansion in areas such as machine learning and cloud computing. Microsoft is up more than 49%, while Apple is up about 13% and Amazon is up more than 3%.
Its stocks don’t come cheap and trade at a premium of 20% over the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index. But high valuations haven’t stopped investors from adding to technology stocks this year. The Nasdaq 100 Index rallies more than 22% on each of the S&P 500 Indexes, and the Nasdaq Composite is up about 20%.
“Size is size and strength is strength. That’s the kind of thing that is nice to see; Microsoft was a rock star in the ’90s – one of the Four Horsemen – and they clearly got their mojo back, ”said Matousek.
