These 4 Companies, Led by Apple, Had Market Caps Over $1 Trillion at the End of 2020

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 19, 9:16AM EST · Published Jan 3, 7:00AM EST

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These 4 Companies, Led by Apple, Had Market Caps Over $1 Trillion at the End of 2020 — © Eric Thayer / Getty Images News via Getty Images

The stock market hit nose bleed levels at the end of 2020, which took the market caps of many of America’s largest companies to records and allowed private company after private company enter the market with an IPO. At the end of 2020, four public corporations had market caps above $1 trillion, a figure not imaginable just a few years ago.

The pack was led by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction), the only company with a market cap of over $2 trillion. It ended 2020 at $2.27 trillion. The figure was driven by the launch of the 5G enabled iPhone 12, massive holiday sales, a services business that has become its fastest-growing division, and a revival of Mac purchases. It ended the year with several open questions. One is whether Apple TV+ can compete with the Walt Disney Disney+, Netflix, and Amazon Prime streaming services. It is a crowded field, and Apple has entered it later than many others.

Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT)market cap ended the year at $1.68 trillion. It has been transformed into the world’s second-largest cloud computing company and a power in personal computing hardware. This is in addition to its position as the leader in PC and server operating systems. It has picked up market share against cloud leader Amazon.com, and its valuation as it enters the new year will depend to a large extent on that progress.

Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) market cap ended the year at $1.63 trillion. The public’s move to e-commerce drove a hockey stick rise in its revenue. This was particularly true over the holidays as people stayed out of stories due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon remains a leader in streaming via its Prime Video service. Some analysts believe its market-leading cloud business AWS is worth as much as half of Amazon’s value.

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Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) valuation at $1.19 trillion continues to rely on its search engine market share, a position which was attacked last year by the federal government as a monopoly. This challenge is a greater danger to its business than any competition. Its YouTube video site, the largest in America, amassed additional ad revenue. Its cloud business is also in the top five in terms of revenue. The question for Alphabet investors is whether the company can remain intact as the government challenge continues.

Each of these four companies trades at or near the top of its valuation. That is true for the stock market in general. If the market begins to fall this year, one question is whether these four companies lead it down, or are dragged down in a larger market sell-off.

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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.