Apple, Microsoft Are the Biggest Wall Street Winners of 2019

Apple’s market cap increased nearly $500 billion in 2019 — or more than the combined valuation of Netflix and Disney

The five companies to enjoy the biggest valuation increases this year, up through Thursday morning, have all come from the tech world.

Apple and Microsoft, the two longtime rivals, have led tech’s big year, with Apple’s market cap increasing nearly $500 billion in 2019 — which comes out to about $100 billion more than the combined valuations of both Disney and Netflix, for comparison. Microsoft, spurred by its bet on its cloud business, has had a huge year as well, with its value growing $397.6 billion this year. With both companies hovering around a $1.2 trillion market cap, Apple and Microsoft are battling for the claim to being the world’s most valuable company right now, with Apple holding a slight edge.

As Ramp Capital pointed out on Twitter on Thursday, the next three companies with the biggest valuation increases this year also come from tech.

Here’s a look at the top 5 jumps this year:

  • Apple: $497 billion
  • Microsoft: $397.6 billion
  • Alphabet, the parent company of Google: $212.4 billion
  • Facebook: $209.7 billion
  • Amazon $149.4 billion

JPMorgan Chase, after gaining about $115 billion in value this year, was the firm to break up the tech streak. It’s worth pointing out Facebook, after a 2018 that was marred by a handful of major data privacy issues, has bounced back in a big way– despite paying a $5 billion FTC fine for its data breaches in July. In recent months, the social network has battled criticism from both Sen. Elizabeth Warren and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen over the content it allows on its massive platform; CEO Mark Zuckerberg, responding to Warren’s jabs at its political ad policy, has insisted Facebook is better off letting users decide what is and isn’t true in political ads, rather than the company.

Amazon, meanwhile, has continued to grow at a healthy clip, but it has fallen off slightly during the second half of the year. The e-commerce giant on Thursday morning was valued at about $890 billion but had been hovering near the $1 trillion valuation during the summer. (Amazon initially became the second company to ever hit the $1 trillion threshold in late 2018, after Apple.)

And while they haven’t seen their market caps expand as much as the juggernauts mentioned above, Snap Inc. and Roku have been two of the major stories this year on Wall Street. Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has seen its stock price nearly triple since early January, thanks in large part to users rushing back to the app after an ugly 2018. And Roku, which recently boasted that its 32.3 million accounts streamed more than 10 billion hours of content during Q3, has gone from about $32 per share at the beginning of the year to $135 per share on Thursday.

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