How big are the largest American companies?

Somewhere between colossal and titanic. Apple, the largest publicly traded company in the world, has a market capitalization of $2.4 trillion. If it were its own country it would be slightly less valuable than all the publicly-traded stocks in Germany and slightly more valuable than those in South Korea. Microsoft is worth $2.2 trillion, a little less than South Korea, but worth more than Australia. Google and Amazon are worth $1.8 trillion and $1.7 trillion respectively, less than Australia but more than Brazil. Facebook’s value of $1.0 trillion is greater than all the stocks in Russia and Spain. Tesla and NVIDIA are worth $700 billion and $500 billion respectively, not good enough to make the trillion-dollar club, but good enough to be worth more than the stocks of Mexico or Indonesia. The stock markets of those two countries are worth about the same as JP Morgan Chase.

Each of these countries has hundreds or thousands of publicly traded companies and some of the most recognized brands in the world. The eight of them represent over $13 trillion in GDP and just shy of 1 billion in population. The eight American companies on the other hand are slightly more valuable on a market capitalization basis, have $1.5 trillion in revenue, and employ 2.2 million people. Simply put, the largest U.S. companies are very valuable.

American brands are strong, but there’s a world of growth potential if we look overseas. That’s one of the many reasons we continue to hold international stocks.

The following table summarizes the figures mentioned above.