Apple is not worth as much as it was five months ago

Back in August 2018, Apple became the first U.S. public company to reach a valuation of one trillion dollars. Amazon joined this exclusive club the following month. Not too long after it surpassed the trillion-dollar valuation mark, Apple's stock plunged 35% before it embarked on a 120% rally that took the company to a valuation of well over one trillion dollars once again.

The tech giant managed to keep its valuation above the one trillion dollar mark since October until the last ten minutes of last Friday's trading session. Bloomberg reports that at one point as the market was about to end its worst week since 2008, Apple traded as low as $228; at that price, Apple was worth $998 billion. Some buying came in at the last minute giving Apple a closing price of $229.24 for a market capitalization of $1.003 trillion. But the company is hardly out of the woods. In after-hours trading, Apple closed at $228, the low of the regular trading session.

The last word from Apple is that it will report revenue for the current quarter (the fiscal second quarter) below the $263 billion low-end of the range it announced in January. Obviously, the coronavirus is to blame. While many forced to self-quarantine will be unable to get the paychecks that they have been relying on, the global economy faces the threat of not just a recession, but a worldwide depression. Consider this sobering statistic. The U.S. stock market (represented by the 30 stock Dow Jones Industrial Average) is now in the red since President Donald Trump took office in January 2017. And the 35% decline in the market over the last month is the worst monthly performance since 1928.

Two other tech companies, both of which had recaptured $1 trillion valuations in January, fell under that level when the coronavirus sell-off first started last month. Those two are Amazon and Google parent Alphabet.