The Decline of the Top Ten Stocks in 2022
Bryan Taylor, Chief Economist and Michelle Suzanne
It was a sad year for stocks in 2022. As the Fed raised interest rates and war raged in Ukraine, stocks declined and billions of dollars in market cap were lost. The Market Cap of US Stocks was 214% of GDP in 2021; however, it declined to 150% of GDP by the end of 2022 as is shown in Figure 1. The Top 50 stocks declined in value from $24 trillion to $18 trillion, while the Top Ten stocks fell from $13.4 trillion to $8.8 trillion. This article discusses the decline of The Top Ten stocks in the United States which lost a combined value of capitalization of over $5 trillion during 2022.
Figure 1. Market Cap of US Stocks as a Percentage of GDP, 1980 to 2022
Global Financial Data has information on market cap for US companies going back to 1792 when the First Bank of the United States was the largest company in the United States. If you read the blog, “Two Centuries of American Leadership”, you can find out what was the largest company in the United States in each of the past 23 decades. The article, “Four Centuries of Global Leadership” does the same for the entire world.
In Table 1 below, the top ten stocks are ranked according to market capitalization for the years 2021 and 2022 and the last column indicates the percentage change as of December 31, 2022. Each of these have been strong companies over the past years; however, a few of them have experienced huge losses as can be seen in the table.
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Table 1. Comparison of Companies by Market Capitalization in the United States, December 31, 2021, and December 31, 2022 |
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2021 Ranking |
2022 Ranking |
Stock |
Ticker |
Market Cap. 2021 |
Market Cap. 2022 |
Percentage Change |
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|
|
1 |
1 |
APPLE INC. |
AAPL |
2913.28 |
2066.94 |
-29.05 |
|
|
|
2 |
2 |
MICROSOFT CORPORATION |
MSFT |
2525.08 |
1787.73 |
-29.2 |
|
|
|
3 |
3 |
ALPHABET INC. |
GOOG |
1920.66 |
1148.43 |
-40.21 |
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|
4 |
4 |
AMAZON.COM, INC. |
AMZN |
1691 |
856.94 |
-49.32 |
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|
5 |
11 |
TESLA, INC. |
TSLA |
1061.29 |
388.97 |
-63.35 |
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|
6 |
19 |
Meta Platforms, Inc. |
FB |
935.64 |
319.09 |
-65.9 |
||
|
7 |
13 |
NVIDIA CORPORATION |
NVDA |
735.28 |
359.5 |
-51.11 |
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|
8 |
5 |
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC. |
BRK.A |
671 |
686.31 |
2.28 |
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|
9 |
6 |
UNITEDHEALTH GROUP INCORPORATED |
UNH |
472.94 |
495.37 |
4.74 |
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|
10 |
10 |
JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. |
JPM |
467.88 |
393.34 |
-15.93 |
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|
11 |
9 |
VISA INC. |
V |
456.34 |
428.34 |
-6.14 |
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|
12 |
7 |
JOHNSON & JOHNSON |
JNJ |
450.25 |
461.85 |
2.58 |
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Apple Dominates Despite Recent Market Declines
The largest company in the United States by market cap has been Apple for the past ten years. As Figure 2 shows, Apple has provided steady returns since 2003. Though its market cap declined from $2.913 trillion in 2022 to $2.066 trillion in 2021, losing 29% of its market cap, Apple remained the largest company in the world. Apple has been the largest company in the world since 2012 when it first reached a $500 billion market cap. Apple was the first company in the world to reach and maintain a $1 trillion market cap in 2019.
Figure 2. Apple Inc. Stock, 1981 to 2023
More Fallen Giants
The next three positions in the ranking of the Top Ten in the United States remained the same: Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon.com, although all three lost hundreds of billions in market cap. The performance of those three stocks is shown in Figure 3. Microsoft had been the largest company in the world in 1998 and 1999, but is now the second largest company in the United States. At the end of 2021, there were five companies with a market cap exceeding $1 trillion, but by the end of 2022, there were only three.
Figure 3. Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon Stock, 2013 to 2023
Loss Leaders
The two largest declines in market value were Tesla and Meta Platforms, which lost 63% and 65% of their market cap in 2022 respectively. Facebook first IPO on May 8, 2012 as depicted in Figure 4 (GFD has IPO information on each company in its database). Facebook stock peaked at $382 in September 2021 and declined to under $100 in November 2012. Facebook joined the Top Ten in 2015 and changed its name to Meta Platforms in October 2021 and has declined ever since.
Figure 4. Facebook Stock, 2012 to October 28, 2021
Using the US Stocks Database allows you to access the historical values of the stock price or create a graph of the current data, as represented in Figure 5, which shows a graph of the up-close decline. Maybe Meta should change its name back to Facebook.
Figure 5. Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook) Stock, October 28, 2011 to 2023
Tesla joined the Top Ten in 2020. The company had built up a long base between 2013 and 2019, as can be seen in Figure 6, and had a dramatic increase in price between 2019 and 2021. During 2022, Elon Musk, the principal owner of Tesla, was the richest man in the world until the stock price started to decline and he lost that title to Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH. Tesla dropped from Number 5 in 2021 to Number 11 in 2022 and Meta Platforms fell from Number 6 to Number 19.
Figure 6. Tesla Stock, 2010 to 2023
ExxonMobil The # 1 Winner in 2022
Not every company lost value in 2022. The biggest winner in the Top Ten was ExxonMobil Corp. which increased its market cap by over 90% from $259 billion to $454 billion, moving up from Number 28 to Number 8. ExxonMobil fully regained the market cap it lost in 2020 when the price of oil declined during the Covid pandemic. The stock is now at its highest price in history. ExxonMobil was the first company in the world to have a market cap of $1 billion.
You can read about this achievement in the blog, “The First Billion-Dollar Company.” Standard Oil was split up into 35 companies in 1913 when it fell afoul of the antitrust laws, and changed its name to Standard Oil of New Jersey, to Exxon in 1972 and to ExxonMobil in 1999 when the company merged with Mobil Oil. The company has shown steady growth over the past 140 years as can be seen in Figure 7. You wonder if Dow Jones regrets removing the company from the Dow Jones Industrial Average two years ago.
Figure 7. ExxonMobil (Standard Oil of New Jersey) Stock, 1882 to 2023
ExxonMobil became the largest company in the United States in 1884 when it had a market cap of $106 million, exceeding the market cap of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. (later Penn Central) and becoming the first non-railroad or non-bank to hold the title of the largest company in the United States. Standard Oil/ExxonMobil was periodically the largest company in the world, last achieving that status in 2011 before Apple took on that title.
A Legacy Leader
One other company in the Top Ten of 2021 showed an increase in its market cap in 2022, Berkshire Hathaway, which rose slightly from $671 billion to $686 billion, mainly because some of its holdings, such as Occidental Petroleum, increased in price. Berkshire Hathaway owes its success to one man, Warren Buffett, since the company had been an unknown maker of men’s shirts before Buffett took over in the 1960s. The company’s price behavior is illustrated in Figure 8.
GFD has more history on Berkshire Hathaway than any other data company. If you want to see how Berkshire Hathaway performed before Warren Buffett took over the company 50 years ago, see the article “Berkshire Before Buffett.” As we discovered, it wouldn’t have made any difference which company Buffett took over. The Sage of Omaha would have made it successful.
Figure 8. Berkshire Hathaway “A” Shares, 1928 to 2023
Of the remaining three companies in the Top Ten in 2022, one company, Nvidia Corp. fell out as it lost about half of its value, while the remaining two, United Health Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co. saw small declines in their market cap. In addition to ExxonMobil, there were two new entrants into the Top 10 companies, Visa and Johnson & Johnson, which had held the eleventh and twelfth positions in 2021. Both companies increased their market cap in 2022.
Looking Beyond 2023
Global Financial Data is able to perform this analysis because we have market cap data on every company that listed on a US exchange since 1792. The Bank of the United States was the largest company in the United States from 1792 to 1840, Chicago railroads from 1855 to 1885, Standard Oil from 1890 to 1920, American Telephone & Telegraph from 1925 to 1965, IBM from 1970 to 1990, Microsoft, ExxonMobil and General Electric through 2011 and Apple since 2012.
How long will Apple’s reign continue, and who will challenge it for the top position? Currently, it appears to have no competitor. Apple will probably continue to rule the market as the largest company in the United States for some years to come.
