Since March 2020, Apple's market value has soared.
Apple's market capitalization once exceeded $3,000 billion, becoming the world's "fifth-largest economy."
In the middle of March 2020, Apple's stock price was only about $60, and as of January 4, 2022, Apple's market value had soared to $179.7, which is equivalent to almost 3 times Apple's market value in less than two years.
More critically, on January 4, 2022, Apple's stock price was as high as $182.94 intraday, according to this stock price, Apple's market value once exceeded $3,000 billion, and Apple also rose to become the world's "fifth largest economy".
According to the GDP data of the world's countries in 2020, the top 5 countries in the world are the United States with 20.94 trillion US dollars, China with 14.72 trillion US dollars, Japan with 4.98 trillion US dollars, Germany with 3.85 trillion US dollars, and the United Kingdom with 2.71 trillion US dollars.
According to the performance of Apple's market value on January 4, the market value of Apple has surpassed the United Kingdom to become the world's fifth largest economy, and a company has exceeded the GDP of 95% of the world's countries.
Apple's stock surge was mainly due to its bright performance and the global loose monetary environment.
The reason why Apple can achieve this result is that on the one hand, Apple's own performance is relatively satisfactory.
Despite the impact of the epidemic, Apple's performance in the past year is still very eye-catching.
According to Apple's data released for each quarter of fiscal 2021, in the first fiscal quarter, Apple's revenue was $111.439 billion, an increase of 20% year-on-year; net profit was $28.955 billion, an increase of 29% year-on-year.
In the second fiscal quarter, Apple's revenue was $89.6 billion, up 54% year-on-year; net profit was $23.63 billion, up 110% year-on-year;
In the third fiscal quarter, Apple's revenue was $81.4 billion, up 36% year-on-year, and its net profit was $21.740 billion, up 93.23% year-on-year;
In the fiscal fourth quarter, Apple's revenue was $83.4 billion, up 29% year-over-year, and profit was $20.6 billion, up 62% year-on-year.
Throughout fiscal 2021, Apple's revenue reached $366.739 billion and net profit reached $94.6 billion.
The reason why Apple has been able to achieve such brilliant results is that the Chinese market has contributed a large part of revenue and profits.
From the first quarter to the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021, Apple's Greater China revenue was $21.313 billion ($13.578 billion last year), $17.7 billion ($9.46 billion last year), $14.762 billion ($9.329 billion last year) and $14.563 billion ($7.946 billion last year), respectively.
Greater China contributed $68.338 billion, or 17.4%, to Apple throughout fiscal 2021; this revenue increased by 69.5% compared to the same period last year.
Of course, in addition to greater China, including the North American market, the European market and the Japanese market, the performance is also more eye-catching, which also promotes Apple's revenue and profit growth significantly, which provides a strong backing for the substantial growth of their stock market.
In addition to the eye-catching results, Apple stocks can soar all the way, and another important reason is that in the past year or so, global liquidity has been relatively good.
Since March 2020, central banks around the world have launched loose monetary policies, especially the Federal Reserve to open unlimited QE, and the US government has launched several consecutive daily economic stimulus programs, releasing a large number of dollars to the market.
But over the past year or so, the U.S. economy has not performed very well, resulting in a large amount of money only entering the capital market, which has led to an increase in stock and commodity prices.
In the context of increased global liquidity, not only Apple, in fact, in the past year or so, many global capital prices have risen sharply.
Hidden Crisis in Global Stock Market Surge: Musk predicts a financial crisis in 2022.
Over the past year or so, many people have made a lot of money from the stock market, and if a person buys Apple stock for $1 million in early March 2020, it has now become about $3 million, and the annualized yield of this investment can reach more than 100%.
However, under the background of the global stock market, there are actually some hidden undercurrents, and it may even trigger an economic crisis in the future.
For example, a few days ago Musk tweeted his views on the economic situation in 2022, he mentioned that "predicting the macro economy is challenging, my intuition is that the Great Recession will be around the spring or summer of 2022, but no later than 2023."
Musk's implication is that a global economic crisis could occur in 2022, no later than 2023.
As for why Musk predicted this, he did not give a specific reason, his basis is simple, relying on intuition.
After seeing Musk's alarmist remarks, many people may think that Ma is talking crazy again, and his purpose is to empty the cannon and then scare the stock market, so as to achieve the purpose of paying less taxes.
Musk received 25.5 million Tesla-adjusted options in 2012, and musk received 22.9 million of them because Tesla's operations and finances met expectations.
The options expire in August 2022, which means that musk will have to swap them for Tesla stock until August 2022.
The stocks replaced by these options are not common stock and are subject to huge personal income taxes, and according to tesla's stock, it is expected that Musk's federal and state taxes may reach more than $11 billion.
But if Tesla's stock price falls in the future, such as 30% on the basis of the current stock price, Musk can pay about $3 billion less in taxes.
Because of this, we do not rule out that Musk has released some alarmist news in order to reduce personal income tax, which has achieved the purpose of pulling down Tesla's stock price.
But I think Musk predicted the economic crisis in 2022, definitely not just because he wants to lower the special price of stocks, but because the current global economy does hide the factor of recession.
History is always strikingly similar, and the occurrence of economic crises is not accidental, but has certain laws.
Economic crises generally go through several processes.
The first stage: for some reason, the production and operation activities of the whole society have shrunk significantly, and the social investment activities have also decreased, employment has decreased, and the economic growth rate has slowed down. (After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the global economy has been greatly affected, and the economies of many countries have negative economic growth)
The second stage: in the context of economic slowdown, in order to stimulate economic growth and drive employment growth, various countries will adopt more loose monetary policy, or even zero or negative interest rates to stimulate social investment, and market liquidity will increase significantly. (Starting in March 2020, loose monetary policy has generally begun around the world, especially the United States has released a large amount of dollars to the market.)
The third stage: because the market funds have become more abundant, the cost of funds is very low, and the borrowing threshold of financial institutions is relatively low, many people will borrow money from other financial institutions such as banks to invest.
In the context of the growth of demand for social investment, the demand for production factors such as raw materials will increase, and the cost of means of production will rise sharply (from 2020 to 2021, many materials and materials produced in the world, including oil, gas, coal, and copper mines, have risen sharply).
The fourth stage: because the economy is gradually recovering, employment opportunities are increasing, everyone's confidence in the future is further enhanced, and the future development prospects are full of optimism, and in this context, the market funds are relatively generous, the financing cost is relatively low, so many people will borrow money to speculate in stocks or buy houses, thus continuously promoting the rise of the stock market and the property market. (Over the past year or so, global stock market and property prices have generally risen for this reason.)
The fifth stage: when the market has a lot of money, the supply of funds far exceeds the funds needed for economic growth, and the excess funds will form bubbles when idling in the financial market, and many prices will rise with them (in the past period of time, us prices soared, and the CPI was even close to 5%).
The sixth stage: In order to prevent excessive price increases, while curbing some speculation, the government began to shrink the monetary base, reduce the liquidity of the market by raising interest rates and other ways, and everyone's financing costs are higher and financing difficulties. (This could happen in the event of a global rate hike in the future, and based on current global economic trends, 2022 to 2023 is likely to be a key point in time for rate hikes.)
Stage Seven: Once the cost of financing increases and the difficulty of financing increases, the debts of many individuals and enterprises may not be able to be continued, and even the capital chain will break and lead to debt default. (Will it happen in the future?) We'll see)
Out of various worries, after the interest rate hike, many people will sell the stocks on hand, and when a black swan event occurs one day, it will cause panic in the market, resulting in a sharp decline in the price of stocks, real estate and other assets.
Once the price of stocks and real estate assets gradually falls, the stocks that everyone uses to pledge, the real estate used for mortgage may not be enough to repay the debt, at this time, banks and other financial institutions may require early recovery of funds, and many people will sell real estate stocks at a lower price, thus plunging the financial market into a vicious circle and triggering an economic crisis.
So Musk's predictions of a financial crisis are not entirely unfounded.
As one Twitter user put it, similar to history, musk is referring to a recession that will begin with a sell-off in U.S. stocks. "U.S. stocks are now in a similar situation to December 1999, where 60 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 are at a one-year low, while the index as a whole is at an all-time high, and now the Fed is scaling back quantitative easing, and in the history of the sale that would have begun when quantitative easing was over."