Wall Street Watch Tuesday: Apple is the Greatest of All-Time
There has never been a more valuable company than Apple (AAPL) right now.
The tech giant closed at an all-time high of $665.15 on Monday. Perhaps more importantly, Apple's market cap -- the product of its shares outstanding multiplied by its current share price -- hit $623.5 billion as of Monday's close.
You have to go back 13 years to find the last time that a stock was worth nearly as much. Microsoft (MSFT) peaked at a market cap of $613.3 billion at the top of the dot-com bubble in late 1999.
We all know what happened after that. The bubbled popped, and tech stocks came crashing down.
Worrywarts will argue that it will happen again, but there's a big difference between where Apple kicks off its trading day on Tuesday and where Microsoft was several Tuesdays ago. Microsoft was ridiculously overpriced at more than 50 times earnings when it embarked on the beginning of what many call Mr. Softy's lost decade.
Apple, on the other hand, is making juicy profits on its iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Even at Monday's close -- again, an all-time high for any company in terms of market capitalization -- Apple is still trading at just 15 times this fiscal year's projected profitability.
Other things worth watching
Some Facebook (FB) insiders really are moving on. In an SEC filing on Monday night, it was revealed that early investor Peter Thiel sold most of his stake in the social networking website operator. The billionaire tech investor unloaded nearly 20.1 million shares after the lock-up restrictions on his shares expired on Thursday. The stock has shed nearly half of its value since going public in May, but Thiel apparently isn't going to wait around to see if Facebook bounces back.
DreamWorks Animation (DWA) will have a new hand to draw with next year. The computer animation studio will team up with News Corp.'s (NWSA) 20th Century Fox as its new distributor in a five-year deal announced Monday afternoon. News Corp.'s studio will market and distribute DreamWorks Animation's rendered feature films worldwide through 2017, replacing DreamWorks Animation's longtime partner Viacaom's (VIA) Paramount Pictures.
Motley Fool contributor Rick Munarriz does not own shares in any of the stocks in this article. The Motley Fool owns shares of Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended buying shares of Dreamworks Animation Skg, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. Motley Fool newsletter services have recommended creating a bull call spread position in Apple and a synthetic covered call position in Microsoft.
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