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The Almighty Buck Businesses Facebook Microsoft United States Apple

Tech's Top Seven Companies Added $3.4 Trillion in Value in 2020 (cnbc.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Tech's biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. From a report: The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia -- picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft's growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon's ongoing control of e-commerce and the strength of Google and Facebook's online ad duopoly, Big Tech was neither slowed by Covid-19 nor the rising number of investigations into its dominance. Tesla's wild rally served as the biggest surprise. The stock climbed almost ninefold this year, lifting the electric car maker's market cap from $76 billion at the beginning of the year to $669 billion at Thursday's close. Despite initial factory closures due to the pandemic, Tesla bounced back to deliver a record number of vehicles in the third quarter.
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Tech's Top Seven Companies Added $3.4 Trillion in Value in 2020 More

Tech's Top Seven Companies Added $3.4 Trillion in Value in 2020

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  • Too much inequality is bad (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tinkerton ( 199273 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @05:54AM (#60884322)

    This slightly tautological claim should be a warning to everyone, and last year brought us a shitload of more inequality.
    Of course one cannot object to that because that would mean you're a communist and only communists can oppose the true freedom of oligarchy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Some people have had a very good pandemic. For most of us it has sucked though.

      It's a shame Biden can't be relied on to do much about it.

      • I would simply ask: what do the statistics say. What does the GINI coefficient say. Biden will only make it worse but it will also get worse all by itself.

    • The value of a company is basically how much people want ownership of it. Unless the owners sell shares, they aren't able to live large with that money. Do you think Zuckerberg wants to sell his shares? Also, if the biggest shareholders did try to sell a large amount of their shares it would probably cause a panic and the stock price will drop like a rock.

  • If you've got retirement investments, they are probably dependent on these stocks.

    • There is no guarantee you will be able sell these stocks at these lofty valuations when you retire.

      Even if you can, there is no guarantee you will be able buy same amount of milk, bread and eggs when you sell 1 share in your retirement that you can buy today.

  • No, really, "value"?

    • People often confuse real value and market cap.

      • People often confuse real value and market cap.

        Goes well with a rather inexplicable stock market financially backing that confusion.

        Tends to happen when Greed is never introduced to Regulation at the finance party.

        • Every once in a while, the confusion clears, the stock market collapses, and a lot of people lose a lot of money. Then the cycle starts anew, fueled by greed, corruption, and naivete.

          • Every once in a while, the confusion clears, the stock market collapses, and a lot of people lose a lot of money. Then the cycle starts anew, fueled by greed, corruption, and naivete.

            Every once in a while in the 21st Century, we find yet another mega-corp growing beyond reproach and earning their Too Big To Fail status. There should have been no financial confusion when a global pandemic set in, shuttering entire industries. Instead we find a stock market that in the end, barely noticed a damn thing.

            Because of this and other corrupt financial wizardry, I doubt we'll actually ever see another stock market collapse, much less a crash (unless it is done on purpose)

  • Its Cyberpunk for Real (Score:3)

    by Jarwulf ( 530523 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @07:13AM (#60884370)
    Its the Age of Cyberpunk Megacorporations for real. But instead of neon, and hot girls, and grassroots rockerboys fighting the power we get carbon credits, pronoun policing, transgender bathrooms and a largely apathetic public where the rockerboys instead of fighting the power cancel wrongthink from their twitter accounts.

  • More precisely, the market value of those tech companies increased relative to the value of the dollar. Does that mean the value of those companies went up or does it mean that the value of a dollar went down? How would the analysis change if the value of those companies was measured in ounces of gold or pounds of rice or soybeans instead of dollars? How has the value of those tech companies changed relative to the price of a median US home?

    Survey: Raise your hand if you believe that the official US g

    • Market value is a sort of consensus opinion of how much money you would get if you sell a particular security. It is susceptible to mass delusion and manipulated through money supply.

      Dividends on the other hand, is your share of the cash your investment produced. We used to value the companies by their dividends.

      Then we changed law to tax money earned by labor, blood, sweat and toil, including white collar jobs, the dividends and interest more, a lot more than capital gains. 33% for wages, dividends an

    • The companies driving the advances shot up not only relative to the dollar, but relative to the other 99.9% of companies:

      The S&P 500-stock index, the most widely watched gauge, is finishing the year up more than 16 percent.

      Yet:

      Absent the top 24 companies, dominated by tech and digital services, the S&P 500 return would be negative in 2020, Silverblatt added.

      Inflation alone would not cause that. It is also monopolization.

  • War on retirees and fixed income continues ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @10:20AM (#60884518) Journal
    Amazon, Google and Netflix do not declare any dividend. Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia declare token dividends at 0.6% to 0.9%.

    The income stream for the retirees, especially to the responsible ones who planned and saved for retirement, has been dwindling.

    All the defined benefit plans, pension plans are gone. Instead we have defined contribution plans, like 401Ks and Roths where you need to save it on your own, there is no requirement for the employers to contribute anything to the provident funds.

    The companies that actually had funded their pension funds were raided by Wall Street, claimed the pension funds have been over funded using sham accounting based on a year or two of boom times, and the money was taken out from retirees to give out size bonuses to the Criminal Executive Officers and his minions.

    The responsible retirees who saved, and were planning to live on interest were attacked first. The interest rate has been kept low, ostensibly to keep the economy going, but it has devastated people on fixed income. People were forced to move to equities. In 1990s the "ideal asset allocation" for retirees was 70% bond, 30% stock. Now that allocation would not produce sufficient income. Now a days it is 70% stock and 30% bond even in retirement.

    The dividend distribution is also shrinking. It was routine to get 3% dividend from SP500 companies. Widows and orphans stock of utilities, gas companies, and banks paid out incredible 5% dividends easily. Now the SP500 dividend has fallen to less than 1.5%.

    The culprit? These tech giants with outsize valuation are sucking in the capital and savings at enormous rates. The world capital market is sloshing with 4 to 5 trillion dollars with nothing worthwhile to invest.

    Selling a certain dollar amount of investments every month to fund retirement is the worst thing that can happen to retirees. Remember the virtues of dollar cost averaging drilled into you as part of savings and building the nest egg? Well, for every purchase you made in $CA there was a counter party who sold. If you do $CA in retirement, selling your portfolio, the buyer is doing $CA.

    • To put that into further perspective, if a saver had 1M in the S&P, that 1.5% generates a whole 15K/yr or around 1200/mo. And 1M is at the high end of what most retirees would have.

    • Re:War on retirees and fixed income continues ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @11:36AM (#60884632)

      The reason that you cannot save enough in your defined contribution plan is because you are over taxed on labor income. You paid 20 something percent taxes, or more, on the income you used to buy the stock. Then it wasn't until retirement that you could realize a tax break on your gains and end up at 15% or less in taxes, per your plan. While the Criminal Executive Officer was paid $1 a year plus stock, which he held before selling later to keep the tax rate down. The CEO got to keep a larger percentage of his larger pay package over his entire career, while those of us compensated in cash got screwed. Reaganomics is a trickle-up system if there ever was one. We are all getting raped financially by those at the top. Worse, wages have been flat for the last 50 years. The system is tilted against you. To fix inequality we need a fair tax system. Redistributing wealth requires a fair playing field.

      • Re:War on retirees and fixed income continues ... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @12:21PM (#60884750) Journal
        It is really criminal that income earned by blood, sweat and toil has a max tax rate of 36% while income from capital gains is at 20%. Even the dividends and interest, the mainstay of a retiree's monthly income, is taxed at the highest tax rate.

        While the Criminal Executive Officer, his cohorts, the trust fund babies etc pay 20% tax, if they really want to. Once you have enough, there is this whole industry that shuffles the investment through shell companies in tiny islands and you pay no tax.

        Thomas Picketty showed it using the language economists understand, once the return on capital out paces the return on labor, inheritance will dominate the wealth distribution and we will have super rich class and serfs with nothing in between.

    • Well, personally I prefer control of my money to a vague promise of a pension. That said, 401k’s are a miserable scam between fees and awful performance, but most people cannot actually manage their money themselves to save and let it grow.
      • It was not a vague promise. It was an iron clad contract. The company should contribute to Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a quasi government agency that guaranteed pensions the way FDIC guaranteed deposits. It was strongly enforced and millions of Americans actually enjoyed pensions.

        Then Wall Street started using sham math to steal the funds from the retirees. A couple of good boom years, they show the company has "over funded the pensions" and draw out the money and give themselves huge bonuses.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Buddy, I am from India. The saying there is, "If you are not ushaar (watchful) in the bazaar you lose your nizaar (trousers)". I know that rule book. And I have seen with my own eyes what kind of place you get if everyone lives by this rule.

            USA is a country of laws, and contracts, and law enforcement and strong enforcement of contracts. Correction. Make it used to be instead of is. Truth in advertising, truth in labeling, disclosure requirements, prospectus in securities, disclosure of conflicts of interes

            • It sounds like a good boogeyman, but capital gains covers more than the stock market. It wasn’t long ago that most people covered thei retirement with equity in their home that they realized by selling. There are a lot of checks on capital gain income in general, and at least it is taxed progressively now. The problem with pensions is that it is far too easy to turn them into a pyramid scheme. It has been an issue for at least 30 years from first-hand and experience, with the way fund managers were
              • If you have 30 years of experience, you are probably closer to my age, nearing retirement, deeply pondering structuring the investments from growth orientation to income stream generation. Have you talked to your doctor about realistic life expectancy based on your health, lifestyle and family history? My doctor says I need to plan for 40 more years. Have you tried structuring a 40 year portfolio? Then run a few simulations on a few bad years early, a few boom years early, bad years late, boom years late,
                • I have taken the retire early, retire often mantra. You can handle much more risk if you are willing (and able) to go back to work if finances are not going according to plan. Healthcare costs are the one thing you really cannot plan for. My 401k could never support my retirement, but combined with my other savings should get me by even if I live another 40 years. I have been wanting (and planning/saving) to retire since my first job when I was 13.
                  • Dont worry too much. The social security at the top end would pay something close to 30K a year. With spouse at the same level, you are at 60K. Some moderate income from dividends and interests, you could pull along, no sweat.

                    We should avoid insisting what is good for you should be good and must for everyone else. Not all of America is in this situation of having paid highest social security tax band for 40 quarters. Not all of America have the life skill to manage careful trading through retirement years

    • The income stream for the retirees, especially to the responsible ones who planned and saved for retirement, has been dwindling.

      So sell the damn shares and use the cash you generate. What's the fucking problem, you won't be able to be buried in a casket made of Apple shares whose passive income won't allow you to keep up your standard of living after you no longer work? Your nest egg should let you maintain that standard for a certain amount of time as you draw it down.

      Meanwhile, after the 2008 and 2020 c

      • If you trade a fixed dollar amount of shares every month or every quarter, this benefits the buyer and penalizes the seller. Its called dollar cost averaging and praised to high heavens as a great saving strategy, quite deservedly.

        Every trade you made buying on $CA has a counter party who realized lower average revenue from the trade. In retirement if you are forced to sell fixed dollar amount of shares to keep a roof over your head, you will find your nest egg will vanish faster than you planned. Volatili

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ezdiy ( 2717051 )

          Not using the interest payouts to buy more principal is semantically equivalent to slowly selling off deflationary asset - provided that we consider bubble rally on it to continue ad-nausea (which is assumption about as shaky that dividends would), no?

          • If you take a look after 10 or 20 years, the value of the asset would have eroded by inflation, exactly as you say. And it should, because you lived 10 or 20 years off that asset. But at least you escaped from volatility. You saved time not closely watching the market to time your sales. You saved a lot of anxiety and got peace of mind, She never paid any attention to the markets or trading and has very poor understanding of the markets. But she is all set, she will have enough to go on after I am gone. . T

  • They mostly added in damage!

    Oh, you've been listening to the gamblers again?

    ("Buy this stock from me! It is very valuable! I swearz!")

  • Totally bogus numbers, all from QE (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Friday January 01, 2021 @01:32PM (#60884890) Journal

    The fed is stuffing Wall Street, causing hyper inflation. Nothing is real up there anymore. Crash is coming soon. We need another crisis after the virus dies down

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • It's already happening in the financial markets. That's why we are hearing about these ridiculous trillion dollar "valuations".

        These Tech stocks are mostly just overvalued

        Yes, exactly, and not just tech, it's all of Wall Street. It is overvalued because it is engorged with all that fed funny money.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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