LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Biggest Public Companies in America (numbers as of late July)
Company
Ticker
Market Cap (in billions)
Net Income
P/E
Dividend
(in billions) Yield
1
Apple
AAPL
$784
$46.7
17.6x
1.7%
2
Alphabet
GOOGL
$669
$19.5
33.3x
-
3
Microsoft
MSFT
$558
$16.8
32.3x
2.1%
4
Amazon
AMZN
$489
$2.4
192.0x
-
5
FB
$470
$10.2
40.8x
-
6
Berkshire Hathaway
BRK-B
$420
$24.1
18.6x
-
7
Johnson & Johnson
JNJ
$364
$16.5
22.6x
2.5%
8
ExxonMobil
XOM
$340
$7.8
33.7x
3.8%
9
JPMorgan Chase
JPM
$327
$24.7
14.0x
2.2%
10
Wells Fargo
WFC
$277
$20.4
13.7x
2.8%
11
Bank of America
BAC
$242
$16.2
14.7x
1.3%
12
General Electric
GE
$234
$8.8
24.9x
3.6%
Google is a very handy device for getting facts... If you don’t mind the facts being wrong. I’m a journalist, so I’m in constant need of wrong facts and therefore use Google all the time. So it’s good for me. But how good it is for you, a reader of journalism, is another question. Google has caused my research skills to degenerate to the point where I have to sing the kindergarten “ABC Song” to use the dictionary. Google is like the worst librarian in the world. You ask her a question and she says, “Well, there’s a big pile of books Bankers, as we learned during the 2008 financial crisis, can be every bit as bad as hypothetical teenage daughters
over there, but we haven’t gotten around to sorting them. However, we do have a tattooed skinhead and a Bernie supporter with a braided beard and a pink pussy hat in the reading room and you could ask them.” Then there’s Apple with its gosh-darned iPhone. I hate talking on the telephone. I consider being unable to come to the phone to be one of life’s greatest luxuries. The last thing I want is a telephone that fits in my pocket, can find me wherever I go, fills my head with things like Trump tweets, bowling tournament scores, and how I didn’t win the lottery again, and calls me a cab because my wife says I should quit drinking and get home right now. I want a phone the size of a cement block, like AT&T used to make, and I want it connected to an answering machine that says I can’t come to the phone.
“
8 | August 2017
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