This post lists the 20 publicly traded companies with the largest market capitalization as of today. Since my May 2017 list of the 20 most valuable stocks many of the market caps have increased significantly.

In the 20 most valuable companies list there are 13 USA companies, 4 Chinese companies and 1 each for Korea, Netherlands and Switzerland. The remaining 17 companies with market caps above $200 billion are based in: USA 8, China 5, Switzerland 2, Japan 1 and Taiwan 1.

Tencent (China) soared $192 billion (61%) since my May 2017 post (after a 85% gain shown in the last post – behind only Samsung for largest percentage gain in that post). That gain pushed Tencent over a $500 billion market cap and moved them from 10th most valuable to 6th. Alibaba also soared $192 billion (64% for them) and moved into the top 10.

Apple gained $73 billion in market cap and is closing in on a market cap over $1 trillion since my May 2017 post. Microsoft, which continues to gain value rapidly even though it is not getting the attention of many of the internet companies, increased by $117 billion. Amazon added $106 billion to their market cap in the last 6 months. Alphabet (Google) gained $77 billion while Facebook increased by $94 billion.

The next ten most valuable companies:

Market capitalization shown are of the close of business November 26th, as shown on Google Finance.

GE continued to collapse, dropping another 62 billion add dropping well out of the top 20 (they were one of the 10 most valuable companies in 2016).

The total value of the top 20 gained $1.2 trillion since my February, 2016 post: growing from $7.2 trillion to $8.4 trillion. Remember, the companies making up the top 20 has changed (China Unicom, Visa and Royal Dutch Shell were added while GE, China Mobile and Roche dropped out).

As I noted in Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 2000 to 2016: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon have a combined market capitalization greater than the entire stock market in every country but those in the USA, China and Japan.

Related: Global Stock Market Capitalization from 2000 to 2012 – Stock Market Capitalization by Country from 1990 to 2010 – Historical Stock Returns

A few other companies of interest (based on their market capitalization):

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The USA is currently looking to pass a tax bill. Actually the Republican party has decided to not seek bipartisan solutions so it is the Republicans that are looking to change the tax policy. They wish to call it tax reform but they are reforming nearly nothing. They are mainly moving around tax breaks to different people. The main aim seems to be to reduce taxes without reducing spending which given the huge annual deficit the USA government currently runs that means really this is a plan to shift taxes to the grandchildren of people living right now.

And within lowering taxes for some people today while placing those payments onto their grandchildren there is a bit of shifting around who will pay what now. Mostly this amounts to lowering the taxes on the rich today – along with some lowering of many people’s taxes that are in the middle class.

When you run a huge budget deficit (and have a huge amount of debt outstanding) “cutting taxes today” is just shifting taxes to the kids, grandkids and great-grandkids of those avoiding the taxes today. Truly cutting taxes (versus shifting them to a future generation) requires cutting the outstanding debt (which represents future tax increases) in addition to cutting current taxes.

The White House, Washington DC by John Hunter. See more of my photos of Washington DC.

To find reform ideas in the proposals requires using an extremely broad definition of what reform means. There are some attempts to reduce some favors in the tax code now for special interests. But these are minor compared to the goal of shifting the tax burden to grandchildren from those alive today.

One of the other goals is to reduce the corporate tax rate. This goal doesn’t look so great politically, so they are trying to minimize any focus on this. I think likely a reduction in the corporate tax rate is wise. This is mainly due, not to some principle that 25% corporate tax rate is better than a 35% rate (with all the system-wide effects that results in). Mainly a lower rate is needed when you consider the global economic system and the tax rates of other countries with an understanding of the global economy today. What must be sacrificed to reach a 20% corporate rate seems unreasonable to me, so 25% rate seems more sensible, but at this time they are trying to stretch to a 20% rate (and leave future generations to pay for the difference).

I support the effort to lower the corporate tax rate. In order to pay for that reducing some deductions is sensible. The plans have some of that and while each tax break has special interests benefiting from them I would support adding to the decreases in deductions. I would go along with a 20% rate if that was necessary, but think 25% or 22% or something would be better.

The most ludicrous part of the plan is the favors for trust fund babies. Eliminating the most capitalist friendly tax (the estate tax) and providing trust fund babies not only free inheritance without limit but stepping up the cost basis of investments is indefensible (economically indefensible, politically the Republicans obviously feel favors for trust fund babies are wise).

See my Curious Cat Tax Proposals blog post from 2016 for more of my ideas on how tax reform should be done.

The current deficit spending is made to look much less bad than it really is due to incredibly low interest rates. Given the inevitable rise in interest rates over the next 30 years the debt we pile on future generations is going to be much greater than it appears in an extremely low interest rate environment.

There are essentially 4 areas of significant federal spending.

• interest on the debt – this can’t be changed, it is set by the market
• spending on the department of defense (including spending on veterans)
• social security
• medicare and medicaid

There is no political will to reduce the costs of social security. I would raise the age at which you can begining taking payments and reduce payments to the rich. But this won’t pass, so that won’t change.

The Republicans have greatly increased spending by the department of defense so obviously this results in a tax increase (just on our descendants because they chose not to pay for the higher level of spending they voted for)

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