The Stock Race to $1,000: Apple, Google, and Priceline (AAPL, GOOG, PCLN, BRK-A)

Many investors cannot mentally buy high-priced shares.  It was not really an accident that Warren Buffett split the A and B shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A).  Logic and mental blocks aside, three key stocks are in the race for the $1,000 share price hurdle.  Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is already the most valuable company in the world.  Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) had already been the highest price for some time of these three stocks, but priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN) has now passed it in share price.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has now traded above $600 per share and the $596 share price generates a market value of about $557 billion.  One market pundit named James Altucher has already predicted on television that Apple was going to be a $1,000 stock.  Without rounding errors, a $1,000 Apple stock price would generate a stock market value of close to $935 billion.  Can Apple become the first $1 trillion company in history?  Wedbush Morgan recently gave the street highest price target of $750.00 on Apple. Apple already has likely crossed the $1000 billion cash threshold and it has outlined its dividend and share buyback strategy for the three years ahead.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has lost its wa in share growth that had been seen during the first half of the last decade.  At $643.00, the market capitalization of its equity is about $209 billion and Thomson Reuters has a consensus target of almost $710.00.  If Google manages to get to $1,000 then it will have an equity value of about $325 billion.  Google’s peak has been close to $700 in recent years before the recession, but it is worth noting that market pundit Jim Cramer pitched the idea of $1,000 Google back as long ago as 2007.

priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ: PCLN) is technically the closest of all three stocks in the race to $1,000 for a share price since its shares are up at $725.00 already.  The  share price is already above the consensus target price from Thomson Reuters of about $713.00.  Still, it was just last week that Piper Jaffray said that priceline could hit $1,000 per share over the next two years.  That is substantial for an analyst to  say that.  The company’s market cap is now just over $36 billion, so a $1,000 share price would put the priceline value a hair just under $50 billion.  That may be worth more than all of the equity value of the entire public U.S. airline sector.

Is $1,000 possible on any of these stocks?  It seems unlikely today with where the share prices are and how much real investing dollars it would take to drive up these share prices to that $1,000 value.  Still, a prolonged bull market and an expanded period of positive economic growth might make anything possible.  Now for the caveat.  When you read ‘pom-pom articles’ that could have been generated by a cheerleading squad, perhaps it is important to remember that the best and easiest money has already been made.

JON C. OGG