The Biggest Stock Market Capitalizations Ever, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Apple Inc, Microsoft

NEW YORK - Record high today... a new record high today... today is another record high... ladies and gentleman another record high for Apple. Unlike groundhog day these new record high's for Apple continually mean more money for its stockholders. Apple stock is now up $160 or 37% since it reported its fourth quarter results which blew away anyones estimate. Apple is now in the upper echelon of where companies have ever been valued. Let us take a look at some of the highest valued companies ever.

In this analysis we will use diluted stock value. Currently, most people calculate it on a non diluted basis. However this does not make any sense since a company's stock usually trades based on its diluted stock base. This is simple if there is 1 stock in your company but 9 shares that will give the company no money and the company has $10 of cash and no liabilities. Then it would make sense for the stock to be valued at $1. No one would value it at $10 because the 9 shareholders are going to walk in.

Therefore we will look at how Apple (AAPL) compares to the all time greats. Microsoft (MSFT) in the year 2000 reached a market capitalization of $651 billion. The non-diluted value was $603 billion. Today Apple's diluted value is $555 billion on a diluted basis. Therefore Apples stock would need to go up by $102 to tie Microsoft's record.

General Electric (GE) another high flyer in 2000 hits a high of $59.94 or a diluted value of $605 billion. GE did this with legendary CEO Jack Welch and during the tech bubble. Exxon Mobil (XOM) has the highest profit ever made in a year at $45 billion in a fiscal year but the best profit ever in a 4 month period is $49 billion by Exxon. Apple's record in the last 4 quarters is $32.9 billion but its record in a fiscal year is $26 billion. It will be interesting to see if Apple can break these records in the next year.