Some shares may be worth a few cents, others a few hundred dollars. But few companies boast shares whose value well exceeds 1000 dollars and even fewer are those whose value exceeds 10,000 dollars. And then there is Warren Buffet, whose Berkshire Hathaway Inc boasts shares worth more than $100,000.
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Stocks and market capital
In the past we have seen the shares with the highest market capital, observing that Apple Inc, with its now almost 3 billion dollars in share capital, is the company with the highest market value ever, a record it has held for several years.
However, despite this record, Apple shares are not the most expensive in the world. This is because the market capital of a company represents the sum of all the shares present on the market. Consequently, with the same market value, the more shares there are on the market, and therefore the greater the supply of shares, the lower their value will be.
In fact, shares are a fraction of the market capital of a company. Consequently, if a company, whose market value is hypothetically 3 billion dollars, as Apple could be in the next few years, puts one million shares on the market, these they would potentially be worth 3000 dollars, but if that same company placed twice as many shares on the market, their value would potentially be halved.
It should be noted, however, that their value depends not only on supply, but also on demand. A high demand, in relation to a low supply, would produce a significant increase in the market value of those shares.
The 10 most expensive shares in the world: the ranking
Based on market capital, we can establish that the five companies with the highest market capitalization in the world, i.e. the companies with the highest market value, are Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet, followed by Amazon, Nvidia and Meta, whose market value ranges from approximately 900 billion dollars to almost 3 trillion dollars, according to data updated to December 31, 2023.
If we expand the list to the top 10 companies in the world by market capital, we also encounter Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, Eli Lili and Company and TSMC, whose market value ranges from approximately $500 billion to $790 billion.
- Apple: 2,995
- Microsoft: 2,795
- Alphabet: 1,764
- Amazon: 1,570
- Nvidia: 1,223
- Goal: 909
- Tesla: 790
- Berkshire Hathaway: 784
- Eli Lili and Company: 553
- TSMC: 539
Particularly significant is the case of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s investment company which, in addition to being one of the ten companies with the highest market value in the world, is also one of the 5 companies with the most expensive shares in the world, as well as the only one of the companies on this list whose shares are divided into two classes.
Read also: How to double your savings with the Warren Buffett method
Berkshire Hathaway shares
Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company led by Warren Buffett, nicknamed the Oracle of Omaha, are listed on the stock exchange on the NYSE index of the New York Stock Exchange in two different classes.
On the one hand there are the most common class B, whose market value is around 362 dollars per share. Then there are the less common class A, whose market value is around 551 thousand dollars according to data updated to 17 January 2024 and are among the most expensive shares in the world.
The 10 stocks that are worth the most
As anticipated, among the most expensive shares in the world, only Berkshire Hathaway also appears in the list of the 10 companies with the highest market capitalization.
It must also be said that the class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway not only appear among the most expensive in the world, but, according to data updated to 2024, they occupy first position in the ranking of the most expensive shares in the world.
- Berkshire Hathaway: $537,045
- NVR: $6,425
- Seaboard Corp: $3,602
- Booking Holdings Inc: $3,236
- AutoZone Inc: $2,650
With a market value of over half a million dollars, Berkshire Hathaway shares are the most expensive stocks in the world. Thus outperforming the second-ranked shares by several times.
The high value of these shares is linked in part to the “rarity” of shares on the market, if we look at the market capital of these companies, as anticipated, only Berkshire Hathaway, with its approximately 770 billion dollars of capital market, is among the companies with the highest capitalisation.
The only other company in this ranking to have a capital exceeding 100 billion dollars is Booking Holdings. Whose market capital is estimated at around 112 billion dollars, followed by Autozone, with a market capital of around 46 billion, NVR with around 20 billion and Seaboard Corp, with 3.5 billion.
- Berkshire Hathaway: $537,045 and $769.6 billion in market capital
- NVR: $6,425 and $20.4 billion in market capital
- Seaboard Corp: $3,602 and $3.5 billion in market capital
- Booking Holdings Inc: $3,236 and $112.9 billion in market capital
- AutoZone Inc: $2,650 and $45.9 billion in market capital
Read also: 10 best investments to make in 2024 to boost your portfolio
