By Daniel Sparks
Publication Date: 2026-10-07 03:21:00
Shares of Nvidia (NVDA +0.14%) ended Monday, Oct. 5, at $238.90, a fresh record close. At that price, the artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant is worth around $5.8 trillion — about 4% shy of $6 trillion, a level no company has ever hit.
Milestones like this usually make headlines. But I don’t think they say much about what a stock does next.
Five times, a company has become the first in the U.S. to reach a new trillion-dollar level: Apple (AAPL +0.22%) at $1 trillion, $2 trillion and $3 trillion, and Nvidia at $4 trillion and $5 trillion. In the following 12 months (11 so far, for the last one), the stock’s return ranged from a 31% loss to a 27% gain. And it beat the S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.58%) just twice.
What mattered more, every time, was what happened to earnings — and to the price investors would pay for them.
Image source: Nvidia.
Apple’s milestones went three different ways
For each one, I measured from the close on the day the stock first reached the milestone during trading, out to a year later.
Apple first crossed $1 trillion on Aug. 2, 2018. In the next 12 months, its shares fell around 2% but the S&P 500 gained about 4%. In early January 2019, Apple cut its revenue outlook for the December quarter to about $84 billion, saying iPhone upgrades came in lower than it expected.
The $2 trillion level, hit on Aug. 19, 2020, came just before a boom year for the business. Apple’s earnings per share soared 71% for its fiscal 2021, which ended in late September 2021….
