The technology sector has witnessed huge sell-off in the first week of September triggered by congressional scrutiny of social media companies that raised fears of a new regulation. This was followed by a decline in chip stocks on warnings over weakness in demand for memory chips.
Notably, two of the FAANG stocks — Apple (AAPL – Free Report) and Amazon (AMZN- Free Report) — lost more than $100 billion in market cap combined in the tech rout and dropped below the recently claimed trillion-dollar company. Apple became the first U.S. trillion-dollar company on Aug 2 followed by Amazon on Sep 4.
However, Apple regained its lost market capitalization of $1 trillion while Amazon is still far away. This is especially true as Apple got a boost from the new versions of iPhone launches last week. Additionally, the technology giant escaped largely unscathed from the second round of Trump’s tariff, which excludes consumer gadgets like iWatch.
On the other hand, the e-commerce giant got embroiled in the escalating tit-for-tat tariff talks given that the latest tariff will be applied to routers, networking gear and components for computer servers that will result in a higher operating cost for Amazon Web Services (AWS), the primary source of the company’s profitability.
A Trillion-Dollar Club
The journey of the iPhone maker from a niche player in personal computers to a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications has been remarkable. The achievement was unpredictable in 1997 when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, with its stock trading for less than $1, on a split-adjusted basis, and its market value dropped to below $2 billion. If someone had dared to buy $10,000 worth of the stock at that point of desperation, the investment would now be worth about $2.6 million.
The iPhone maker has surged more than 50,000% since its 1980 initial public offering, dwarfing the S&P 500’s 2,000% increase during the same almost four decades.
