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Comment by reitzensteinm | Hacker News Reader

>.... [Apple] would have a value of more than $3 trillion by 2020. As the Times points out, that is bigger than the 2011 gross domestic product of France or Brazil.

Comparing an outlandish guess for a 2020 market cap versus a 2012 gross domestic product (a flow of money, not a store) is hand waving, not analysis.

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Also, extrapolating without much explanation means squat.

http://xkcd.com/605/

Applies to teenage prodigies too.

I should write about the dancing monkey problem sometime.

This is worse than hand waving. It is the kind of static typing error one gets when using Astrology to reason about money.

You just cannot compare the value of a projection/guess that doesn't account for inflation with the current instantaneous GDP value (thus completely ignoring the fact that money today is worth more than in 2020) while at the same time not projecting Brazil's current value.

It's a [failing] attempt to make sense of hard figures. Pretty much like 3 times the distance between earth and moon.

Surely if the journalist actually thought Apple stock would increase in value 6 fold in the next 8 years they'd buy it. (And then put a disclaimer on the article.) If the market shared their opinion then it wouldn't be available to buy at such a low price.

Apples and Oranges. The GDP is the income of a country (roughly), the market cap is more than the current annual income of a company. Not at all comparable.

Indeed. Makes me wonder what France or Brazil are worth.

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