Only 1 Of The 10 Biggest S&P 500 Companies Of 2000 Is Still In The Top 10 Today

It may seem like $1-trillion companies Apple, Inc AAPL, Microsoft Corp MSFT, Alphabet, Inc GOOG GOOGL and Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN will still be among the most valuable stocks in the S&P 500 50 or 100 years from now. Yet a look back just 23 years to the year 2000 reveals the S&P 500 market cap leaders may look a lot different by 2046.

Big Winners: Today, Apple has a massive $2.4-trillion market cap, the largest of any S&P 500 company by far. Just 23 years ago there was no iPhone, no iPad and no Apple Watch. In fact, there wasn't even an Apple iPod. At the time, Apple's market cap was a measly $16.5 billion.

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The most valuable company in 2046 may not even be public today. Google completed its initial public offering in 2004 and became the most valuable company in the S&P 500 by 2016.

Big Losers: Just one of the 10 most valuable companies in the S&P 500 in 2000 is still in the top 10 today, and that's Microsoft. As recently as 2005, General Electric Company GE was the most valuable company in the S&P 500. Today, GE isn't among the 80 largest companies by market cap.

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GE isn't the only S&P 500 giant of 2020 to fall from grace in the last 22 years. In 2000, insurance giant American International Group Inc AIG was the eighth-largest company in the S&P 500. After getting blown up during the financial crisis in 2008, AIG's market cap is now down about 68% overall in the last 23 years.

While the technology sector has boomed in the last two decades, semiconductor giant Intel Corporation INTC has completely dropped the ball. In 2000, Intel was the tenth-largest company in the S&P 500. Today, it's not even among the five largest semiconductor stocks in the S&P 500.

Benzinga's Take: Massive corporations like Apple, Microsoft and Amazon may seem like unstoppable market juggernauts that will dominate the S&P 500 forever, but history tells investors a very different story.

Companies with the best products, services and brands rise to the top of the market in any given era, but that success is fleeting if they do not continuously innovate and improve year after year and decade after decade.

Photo via Pixabay.