2 hours ago
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
Aramco, the Saudi oil giant, topped the list of the most valuable companies in the world, and snatched the lead from the American company Apple, nearly two years after its decline.
Investors began massive selling of Apple shares, with the aim of transferring their assets to other options, which they see as less risky.
Bitcoin, other digital currencies, and digital investments continued to lose value, rapidly.
Apple shares lost about 5 percent of their value on the New York Stock Exchange, during Wednesday’s trading, as the company’s trading value reached $2.37 trillion at the end of the day.
Thus, the company fell to second place, as the most financially valuable company, after Aramco, which is worth 2.42 trillion dollars.
Aramco was occupying the same position in 2020, and the value of shares of energy production companies has increased during the past months, with the exacerbation of the crisis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This is compared to Apple, whose shares have lost 20% of their value since the beginning of this year, after massive selling of technology stocks in general.
The Nasdaq Technology Index closed on Wednesday, down 3.2 percent, after statistics in the United States indicated that the inflation rate is still approaching the highest limit in forty years.
The phenomenon of high prices is the biggest specific risk threatening the global economy, which is trying to recover from the effects of the Corona virus pandemic.
Central banks, in various countries of the world, raised interest rates, which in turn led investors to turn to less risky investment options, for fear of an increase in the cost of borrowing and a slowdown in the economy.
On Thursday morning, the Japanese “SoftBank” group lost a record amount, exceeding 26 billion dollars, of its market value, due to the decline in its shares.
The same group, which invests in technology, also achieved record gains, last year, in an inverted scene, and from that moment on, the companies in which the group invests, including Didi and Ghorab, began to witness a decline in the value of their shares.
This also led to a drop in the price of Bitcoin, to less than 27 thousand dollars.
The world’s largest digital currency has lost nearly 60 percent of its value since November / Last November, when it reached its highest value ever.
The value of Ether, the digital currency linked to the Ethereum blockchain, fell again, losing about 40 percent of its value, last week.