Amazon set to take back its No. 2 market-cap position from Microsoft
Shares of Amazon.com Inc. slipped 0.4% in afternoon trade Thursday, but was on track to take back its place as the second biggest U.S. company by market capitalization from Microsoft Corp. With 488.97 million shares outstanding as of Oct. 17, the stock's price of $1,749.00 gives Amazon a market cap of $855.21 billion. Microsoft's stock was down 0.6% to $111.25, and 7.68 billion shares outstanding as of Oct. 19, the software giant's market cap is $853.98 billion. Amazon had been No. 2, behind Apple Inc. , briefly seeing market $1 trillion in market cap in intraday trading in late September, until a 20% selloff in October pushed it below Microsoft, which fell 6.6% during the month. Since the end of October, Amazon shares have rallied 9.4% while Microsoft's stock has gained 4.2%. During that time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 1,014 points, or 4.0%. Apple's market cap is currently $986.14 billion and Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s is a distant fourth at $756.63 billion.
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