Big 5 tech giants like Apple, Microsoft added $3.9 tn to their stock value this year

NEW DELHI: The Big Five tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta collectively added a whopping $3.9 trillion to their stock value in 2023, the highest figure in the market's history, a new report revealed on Thursday.

Tech stocks have dominated the 2023 stock market performance. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI), combined with the improving economy and slowing inflation, has helped the sector come into the spotlight, with many investors jumping back on the tech train, according to Stocklytics.com.

The Nasdaq experienced a significant increase of 32 per cent in the first half of the year, which can be attributed to Apple's rapid growth and Nvidia's success.

This marks the best first half performance in the last four decades.

Additionally, the upward trend in the stock prices of tech companies has continued, leading to the largest players in the market adding trillions of dollars to their stock values.

According to YCharts data, the combined stock value of Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta amounted to $6.17 trillion in December last year.

Since then, this figure has surged by 62 per cent or $3.9 trillion and hit more than $10 trillion, representing the biggest annual increase so far.

In 2019, their combined stock value grew by $1.73 trillion. In 2020 and 2021, when the tech market boomed due to Covid-19, the market's largest players increased their stock value by $2.6 trillion.

Moreover, the report showed Meta was the best performer in the Big Tech group this year.

After losing two-thirds of its stock value in 2022, Meta's market cap has surged by an impressive 188 per cent (year-over-year), the biggest increase among the Big Five tech giants.

In December 2022, Meta's stock value was $315.5 billion, and now it’s over $908 billion. Amazon has witnessed the second-largest increase of 84 per cent, driving its market cap to over $1.5 trillion, the figure last seen in mid-2022, the report mentioned.

Microsoft and Alphabet's market caps jumped by 55 per cent (year-over-year), helping the two companies add more than $1.6 trillion in value.

Apple stocks have jumped 45 per cent since last December, crossing $3 trillion in market cap.