seattle prattle wrote:
i've already seen how it works out for me. I was an early adopter and invested wholeheartedly amongst the tech. stocks, and though i own each of those listed now, my earliest investments were in Apple and Google. It wasn't that hard. They were dynamite companies, leaders in their field.
“Several years ago, I observed “We’ve seen very rapid adoption rates, very high replacement, and very strong network effects in Apple’s products. All of this is an extraordinary achievement that reflects Steve Jobs’ genius. I suspect, however, that investors observe the rapid adoption and very high recent replacement rate of three very popular but semi-durable products, and don’t recognize how improbable it is to maintain these dynamics indefinitely. Despite great near-term prospects, within a small number of years, Apple will have to maintain an extraordinarily high rate of new adoption if replacement rates wane, simply to avoid becoming a no-growth company. That’s not a criticism of Apple, it’s just a standard feature of growth companies as their market share expands. It’s something that Cisco and Microsoft and every growth juggernaut encounters. Apple is now valued at 4% of U.S. GDP, but then, Cisco and Microsoft were each valued at 6% of GDP at the 2000 bubble peak. Not that things worked out well for investors who paid those valuations.”
Presently, Apple is valued at 5.1% of GDP, Amazon at 4.8%, Alphabet (Google) at 4.6%, Facebook at 3.3%, and Netflix at 0.8% of GDP. That’s a total market capitalization of nearly 20% of GDP across 5 stocks. It’s worth remembering that historically, the pre-bubble norm for market capitalization to GDP, adding up every nonfinancial company in the stock market, was only about 60%. At secular lows like 1974 and 1982, the ratio fell to 30% of GDP – for the entire market.”
John Hussman, August 2018 Market Commentary
