Hello,

Last week, Nvidia made history when it became the first publicly traded company to reach a market capitalisation of $4 trillion dollars. That’s four million millions. Conceptualising a figure that large is basically impossible but putting it into a different perspective can help: 1 million seconds is roughly 11 days, 1 billion seconds is 31.7 years, and 1 trillion seconds is about 31,700 years.

 

Nvidia has arrived at this milestone just over two years after first cracking the $1 trillion mark in May 2023, its rapid rise owing to its status as the bellwether of the AI rally. But it isn’t the overnight success that some may perceive it to be. The company started out in the video game industry in the 90’s, creating graphics chips for gaming consoles, and was one of the few fundamentally sound companies to emerge in the wake of the Dot-Com Bubble.

 

In November 2001, it earned a place in the S&P 500 index. In a moment which now – two decades later – seems almost poetic, it replaced Enron. Once the seventh-largest company in the US, Enron was in the throes of a corporate fraud scandal that would eventually see the company go bust. It’s a testament to the bounce-back-ability of the market that Enron’s replacement would go onto become the largest stock ever, and also a reminder of the potentially vast differences of fortune among market constituents.

 

As always, if you wish to discuss anything in further detail, please do get in touch.