So, Wall Street is back on par with a week ago—but that disguised the big rebound in the megacaps, led by Apple, which survived the news that Warren Buffett has sold half of Berkshire Hathaway’s stake, taking a lot of money and going into US T-notes.
In fact, after predicting the end of the megacap trade in the wake of Monday’s one-day downer, the seven all fought back with big gains—and in the case of Meta and Nvidia, enormous gains for a four-day period.
More than any index or other measure, the performance of the megas tells us a lot about the health and direction of Wall Street, and as of Friday’s close, it’s determinedly up.
But there are still only two companies worth more than $US3 trillion and only two worth more than $US2 trillion.
Apple ended Friday with a gain of 1.4% and a weekly rise of a solid 8.8%, closing the week with a valuation of $US3.29 trillion, which left it clearly the most valuable company.
Microsoft elbowed its way back with a gain of 0.08% on Friday, 4.4% for the week, and a cap of $US3.02 trillion.
Nvidia saw a 13.8% surge in its value for the week, which included a near 3% gain on Friday. That saw the market cap end at $US2.58 trillion, which is still more than $US700 billion short of its high (that figure is more than Tesla’s cap).
Alphabet shares ignored the “monopolist” ruling in a US federal court (the company’s board and managers probably wear that description with pride) and ended the week up 0.95% on Friday and 5.3% for the week—its value ended at $US2.02 trillion.
Amazon’s cheer squad couldn’t get it back to the $US2 trillion level, so it had to settle with $US1.75 trillion for a small 0.7% rise on Friday and an OK gain of 8.3% for the week.
Meta broke higher in a big way, jumping 14.8% over the four days (1.6% on Friday) to end with a value of $US1.31 trillion.
Tesla joined in, though from a much lower base. Its shares added 8% over the four days (0.6% on Friday) to be valued at $US627 billion at the week’s close.
Outside this group, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway ended the week valued at $US922 billion after a gain of 4.7% (barely moved on Friday), and Netflix was up 7.2% for the week and valued at $US272 billion.