The Incredibly Shrinking General Electric — Market Mad House

I advise those who fear today’s giant tech companies to examine the current sorry state of 20th Century tech giant General Electric (NYSE: GE).

GE was one of the most feared companies of the 20th Century. In fact, science fiction great Kurt Vonnegut was so scared of General Electric he wrote at least two novels about the company. To clarify, Vonnegut’s experiences as a PR man for GE in the 1940s and 1950s helped inspire Player Piano and Cat’s Cradle, Wired observes.

Today, however, nobody is afraid of GE. General Electric (NYSE: GE) stock; for example, was trading at $11.29 on 27 November 2019. Meanwhile, Mr. Market gave GE a $98.602 billion market capitalization on the same day.

Does Fear and Loathing Drive Stock Value?

In contrast, Mr. Market gave Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), or Google, General Electric’s successor as the popular imagination’s corporate bogeyman, a market cap of $897.458 billion on the same day.

Moreover, shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) traded at $1,312.99. Thus it could pay for a company to be feared and hated.

For instance, another hated company Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) had a market capitalization of $901.612 billion on 27 November 2019. Additionally, Amazon shares were…