The Trillion Dollar Years of the S&P 500

In 1982, the total market capitalization of the S&P 500 (Index: SPX) exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. In 2022, the index closed the year with a total market cap of $32.12 trillion.

The following chart tracks the four decades of the S&P 500′s market cap history that constitutes its trillion dollar valuation years:

In 2019, some thirty-seven years after the value of the entire index first grew larger than $1 trillion, two of its component companies saw their market caps grow to exceed that level: Apple (NASDAQ: APPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Though the end of the 2022 calendar year, they’re the only two companies of the index to sustain market capitalizations in excess of $1 trillion.

At the end of 2021, Apple’s valuation was $2.9 trillion while Microsoft’s market cap was $2.5 trillion, with the two companies combining for a $5.4 trillion valuation. At the end of 2022, Apple’s market cap had faded to just under $2.1 trillion, while Microsoft’s shrank below the $1.8 trillion mark. In between 2019 and 2022, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) were brief members of the trillion dollar market cap club.

Since the first chart spans more than one order of magnitude, here’s another chart presenting the same data using a logarithmic scale:

References

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Index Earnings. Standard and Poor. [Excel spreadsheet]. 31 December 2022. Accessed 21 January 2023.

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Top 10 Annual Issues by Market Value. Standard and Poor. [Excel spreadsheet]. 31 December 2022. Accessed 21 January 2023.