MATTHEW LYNN: Trillion-dollar club: who'd want to join?
Huge valuations on tech giants a reliable signal to bail out
Rewind six months, and it all looked very different. Apple was celebrating becoming the first company to break the $1-trillion (R13.8-trillion) market value barrier. Amazon was not far behind, confirming Jeff Bezos's position as the richest man in the world. Google's parent Alphabet didn't look to be far off, and even Microsoft was getting close to that magic number. Amid the euphoria over the rise of tech giants, a trillion was starting to become the new normal. And now? Apple has crashed in value, and so has Amazon. It looks like it will be a while before any company gets to those kinds of lofty valuations again. Why? When a stock is worth that much, it is time for investors to get out. The race to become the first company worth a trillion dollars was an engaging sub-plot to the tech bull market that evaporated in a wave of selling at the close of last year. In the end, the contest was won by Apple when, on August 2, its shares punched up to $207.05. It was followed by Amazon, whi...
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