Shares of Qualcomm (QCOM) are trading higher again to kick off the week after last week’s monster surge in the wake of the royalty settlement with Apple (AAPL). In just the last four trading days, the stock has rallied more than 43%. Now, it’s rare enough to see small cap stocks rally 40% in the span of four trading days, but for a mega-cap stock like QCOM, it’s practically unheard of. In just the last four trading days, QCOM”s market cap has jumped by nearly $30 billion from $69 billion to just under $99 billion. In the process, it has passed stocks like CVS, Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS), Caterpillar (CAT), Lowe’s (LOW), Starbucks (SBUX), and American Express (AXP) among others.

(Click on image to enlarge)

For QCAM itself, the move over the last four trading days is also reaching historical proportions. The chart below shows the historical rolling four-day rate of change for QCOM, and the current rate of 43.2% now ranks as the second all-time behind only the 53.2% four-day rally in April 1999. What makes that rally in 1999 even more impressive, though, was that even before it started, QCOM was already up 139% YTD after announcing in March of that year that it had settled all outstanding patent litigation with Ericsson related to CDMA technology. After that four day rally, QCOM was up more than 250% YTD and finished the year with a gain of more than 2,600%! The late 1990s sure were fun!

(Click on image to enlarge)