Apple Races Toward $4 Trillion Market Cap

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 21, 7:12AM EDT · Published Oct 19, 9:47AM EDT

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Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) could be the first public corporation to reach a market cap of $4 trillion.
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Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) market cap is currently $3.6 trillion, making it the most valuable company traded on any U.S. exchange. It has raced up at the same pace as the S&P 500 this year, pushing it up 22%. Another 10% increase will bring it to $4 trillion, making it the first public corporation to break that barrier.

Two things could drive the stock higher, or lower. The first is the count of iPhone 16 unit sales. Analysts have several sets of estimates. The most recent of these is from Counterpoint, which said that sales were up 20% in the first three weeks it was on the market in China. This is compared to iPhone 15 sales for the same period a year ago. China is a critical market because there are 900 million smartphone owners there, compared to less than 300 million in the United States.

The second catalyst for the share price is the next earnings announcement on October 31. It is hard to say what a home run quarter would look like. Last year’s revenue was $89.5 billion, and per-share earnings were $1.46. iPhone 16 sales will barely be included, based on when the phone first went on sale. However, it will need to show significant progress from the 2023 numbers.

Apple is in a race for the $4 trillion crowd. The other contestant is AI bellwether Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA), whose earnings need to grow in high double digits to keep up its extraordinary revenue run.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.