In 1982, the total market capitalization of the S&P 500 (SPX) exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. In 2022, the index closed the year with a total market cap of $32.12 trillion.

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The following chart tracks the four decades of the S&P 500's market cap history that constitutes its trillion dollar valuation years:

In 2019, some thirty-seven years after the value of the entire index first grew larger than $1 trillion, two of its component companies saw their market caps grow to exceed that level: Apple (APPL) and Microsoft (MSFT). Though the end of the 2022 calendar year, they're the only two companies of the index to sustain market capitalizations in excess of $1 trillion.

At the end of 2021, Apple's valuation was $2.9 trillion while Microsoft's market cap was $2.5 trillion, with the two companies combining for a $5.4 trillion valuation. At the end of 2022, Apple's market cap had faded to just under $2.1 trillion, while Microsoft's shrank below the $1.8 trillion mark. In between 2019 and 2022, Amazon (AMZN) and Tesla (TSLA) were brief members of the trillion dollar market cap club.

Since the first chart spans more than one order of magnitude, here's another chart presenting the same data using a logarithmic scale:

References

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Index Earnings. Standard and Poor. [Excel spreadsheet]. 31 December 2022. Accessed 21 January 2023.

Silverblatt, Howard. S&P 500 Top 10 Annual Issues by Market Value. Standard and Poor. [Excel spreadsheet]. 31 December 2022. Accessed 21 January 2023.

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