Key Points
Technology and consumer buying have become much bigger businesses than industrial manufacturing and energy.
A couple of familiar names remain among the market’s monoliths.
10 stocks we like better than Apple ›
A lot can happen in 15 years. Kids grow up. Technologies are replaced. Jobs and addresses change. Even seemingly entrenched corporations are dethroned as market leaders.
And it’s this last possibility that’s of most interest to investors. It’s happened so slowly that you may not remember it happening, but not all of today’s titans were the dominant names of 2010. Some of the biggest outfits at that time have been displaced by companies better suited for the changes we’ve seen since then. And some of them haven’t.
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Then and now
The table below ranks the stock market’s five biggest companies (as measured by market cap) as of the end of 2010.
Company | Market Cap 2010 |
|---|---|
ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) | $314.2 billion |
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) | $260.1 billion |
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) | $209.4 billion |
Walmart (NYSE: WMT) | $208.7 billion |
Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A)(NYSE: BRK.B) | $200.9 billion |
Data source: Americanbusinesshistory.org
One name conspicuously missing from this list is General Electric. While it was the world’s biggest company through the latter part of last century, by 2010 computer technologies and consumerism were better growth opportunities than industrial manufacturing…as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) had already begun proving in earnest.
Image source: Getty Images.
And today’s biggest companies? Given the aforementioned evolution of computer technology and the explosion of consumerism, no real surprises here (note that Amazon cracked into the top five in 2017, where it has remained ever since):
Company | Market Cap |
|---|---|
Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) | $4.35 trillion |
Microsoft | $3.92 trillion |
Apple | $3.01 trillion |
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) | $2.36 trillion |
Amazon | $2.28 trillion |
Data source: Finviz.
Investors love to track company size
Investors get very excited when companies muscle to higher and higher market caps. But bigger isn’t necessarily better. After all, the returns on your stocks are only relative to their own historical prices, and not market-cap-based.
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James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Walmart. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
