And … Boom: Apple Briefly Passes Exxon In Market Cap

A new milestone for Apple. The company briefly overtook Exxon Mobil as the world’s most valuable company Tuesday, edging past it after days of volatile stock market trading. Earlier today Apple’s market cap rose to $341.5 billion — just above Exxon’s $341.4 billion — for a few moments before slipping back down again. As I write this, the companies’ market caps are still within spitting distance of one another, with Apple’s hovering around $338 billion and Exxon’s at 339 billion.

An astonishing achievement for a company whose market cap bottomed out at $630.9 million back in 1982.

Incidentally, at $341.5 billion, Apple’s market cap is more than twelve times that of Dell’s $26.54 billion, which is highly ironic considering Michael Dell’s infamous suggestion for the company: “What would I do [with Apple]? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”