Apple is bigger than almost any stock market in the world | Hacker News Reader

Apple is bigger than almost any stock market in the world

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42 pointsretskrad29 comments

Love him or hate him; you have to respect the reality that good leadership and vision is what got this company from it’s main competitor bailing it out 25-ish years ago to becoming one of the most valuable tech companies in the world.

I believe a lot of that came from recognizing and adapting to trends, such as when Napster was an huge thing and Apple chased after a legal digital music option.

I think for anyone who was big on tech in the 90’s, Apple’s current position was unthinkable, such as SEGA no longer being in the console market.

Yes, but also tech in general provides new and innovative ways of implementing vendor lock-in at unprecedented scales. Left unchecked, Apple could easily take much more existing commerce, finance and numerous other business, leveraging their existing platforms.

"The $40 trillion in stock market wealth in the U.S. is almost 60% of the value of all the equities in the world."

Americans make up 4-5% of the world population.

Just last year the Swiss National Bank's portfolio for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft was over 24 billion. They owned 8.5 billion in Apple and 7 billion in Microsoft alone. [1]

[1] https://www.inside-it.ch/big-tech-sorgt-fuer-grosse-verluste...

Americans make up 4-5% of the world population.

Is this about Americans owning 60% of the value of all the equities in the world, or is just that 60% of the value of all the equities in the world are listed on US markets?

Over half of my stocks were bought on US exchanges and I'm not a US citizen. Very roughly calculated, Norway owns about 1.5% of the world's equities so Norway owns a nice piece of that $40 trillion and they're also not US citizens (well, some of them are, I expect).

The fractions are as follows:

[US HQ Public companies / All Public companies] = 60%

[US People / All People] = 5%

The listing venue doesn't matter (though for obvious reasons, almost no US companies list overseas). The 60% also does not include foreign companies like Spotify that list in the US.

The point being that things that started in the US and are primarily run by people in the US are way overrepresented.

And 8 of those Americans personally hold as much wealth as the 4 billion poorest people in the world, or 50% of the population.

If you're an American you're not especially wealthy or well off compared to the world average and adjusted for expenses. It's just rhetoric to make you feel embarrassed for wanting anything more than you have already received.

The US median wealth and income (PPP adjusted) is at or near the top. The 75th percentile is significantly higher than all other countries because educated knowledge workers are building products that are used by the entire world.

That helps illustrate that a lot of US equities are relatively overvalued. Very high valuations and relatively low risk premiums for US equities.

Maybe somewhat, but mostly it means that the US is an economic powerhouse with a lot of companies that provide global value (see: basically every tech company).

Yes that too. It also has some of the best quality companies which accounts for a lot of it, but even then it is still pretty extreme.

does it also illustrate that, outside of america, there are huge numbers of people in poverty?

I don't know what to make of this information. It's clearly true. But I don't understand what it means, what's the take away.

simplified:

Exchanges are a group of public companies. Each company has a market capitalization, calculated by the number of shares * the share price.

Apple's individual market cap is greater than the aggregate market cap (sum of all companies' market caps in the exchange) in many other exchanges in the world.

It means what we already know: Apple is a very large company (it's the largest public company in the world).

It is also unfortunately a sign of a market imbalance. There have been periods in history where one company or group of related companies held a ridiculously large percentage of stock market capitalization. They rarely last for long, and in the long run they always regress to the mean.

Really makes me wonder what the European tech scene is like. I might be living in my North American tech bubble but I rarely hear about large tech conglomerates coming out of the EU nor any "revolutionary" products.

Is there just no investment? What is the US doing that Europe isn't?

    Spotify (Sweden): Spotify is a leading digital music service that provides access to millions of songs. It was founded in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden.

    SAP SE (Germany): SAP is a multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations.

    Nokia (Finland): Nokia is a multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics company, founded in 1865.

    Adyen (Netherlands): Adyen is a global payment company that allows businesses to accept e-commerce, mobile, and point-of-sale payments.

    Arm Holdings (UK): Arm Holdings is a leading technology provider of silicon IP and custom SoCs at the heart of billions of devices. Their architecture is key for computing, especially in mobile devices.

    ASML Holding (Netherlands): ASML is a leading supplier of photolithography systems for the semiconductor industry.

    Zalando (Germany): Zalando is a European e-commerce company based in Berlin. The company follows a platform approach, offering fashion and lifestyle products to customers in 17 European markets.

    Klarna (Sweden): Klarna is a fintech company that provides buy-now-pay-later services, which simplify the payment process for consumers and merchants.

    Revolut (UK): Revolut is a fintech company that offers banking services including a pre-paid debit card, currency exchange, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments.

    DeepMind (UK): Owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google, DeepMind is a world leader in artificial intelligence research and its application for positive impact.

Reads like when I prompted ChatGPT for well-known, large and public projects written in C#. Yeah you’ll get a list, but it’s not a very exciting one and fizzles out after about three entries.

As another commenter said, both operate in the “back end”, non-consumer world.

You aren't in a bubble, there just aren't many. There are tech companies but they're largely copies of US companies built for the local market (DoorDash -> Deliveroo, Uber/Lyft -> Bolt, etc). Europe has twice the number of people so there should be twice the number of notable companies but it's a small fraction instead.

The US has a history of innovation and a culture of ambition, drive, and seeking financial independence. Europe is more concerned with regulation and bureaucracy.

Nr of people is irrelevant. Nr of people speaking same language and having similar culture is relevant. Also nr of steps to break into markets of each eu country

The EU seems to do more "back end" technological developments than it does visible consumer brands. Less Apple or Google, more ASML or Nokia Networks.

Regulations stifle anything that deals with consumers directly.

It does happen. Spotify and Unity come to mind, but then they always move to the US. Don’t know why.

Probably because of antitrust laws that are actually enforced

How is this good if the antitrust laws are stifling innovation. The logical leap is obviously far, but the comment seems to lead a reader to think that antitrust laws is leading to less innovation in Europe..

What was also interesting and caused some issues was when Naspers owned ~1/3 of Tencent when at its peak was valued over $800 billion and their stake was worth more than the entire GDP of South Africa causing them to basically dwarf the rest of the Johannesburg exchange.

As a US citizen, I have always wondered if those in other countries invest in US securities or securities of their home county. Do they buy US securities through an ADR on their local stock market?

They do. Of course there is still a home bias.

AFAIK those stocks are traded directly on foreign exchanges.

Thx!

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