Not even the President of the United States could take a chunk out of Apple.
The tech giant is now within striking range of its all-time high of $132.54, which it hit back in May 2015—an age when Donald Trump didn’t yet factor into stock trades. But persistently falling iPhone sales through 2016 worried investors that Apple may have hit its peak. Donald Trump’s surprise election in November only flamed the jitters felt by tech investors, sending the stock down on Trump protectionist trade and immigration rhetoric.
But now it seems tech investors are a little less worried about the potential disruption Trump’s presidency on the company. Shares of the iPhone maker started rebounding in December. But the stock rose sharply after Apple announced record iPhone sales in the first quarter. That earnings report imbued investors with more confidence that Apple’s 2017 iPhone would be a big hit.
Those results came as CEO Tim Cook criticized Trump for the ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations. Tech companies have been especially loud in their opposition to the order, as a sizable chunk of the industry’s workforce is foreign-born.
Should investors today continue pushing the stock into a new-high today, Apple would hit a market cap upward of $699.5 billion. That would make Apple worth nearly $150 billion more than Google owner Alphabet, which is the No. 2 most valuable company in America. Alphabet had briefly overtaken Apple as the most valuable company back in early 2016.
