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Palantir could be the most overvalued company that ever existed

(247wallst.com)
164 points Anon84 | 1 comments | 08 Dec 25 04:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.196s | source
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duttish ◴[08 Dec 25 06:41 UTC] No.46189143[source]▶
I'll throw the British South Sea Trading Company into the ring for that title of most overvalued company ever.

It had the king himself on the board. The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time. All without actually never producing anything of actual value. It was just bribes and speculation all the way through. It's wild.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Company

Extra History did a more easily digestible series, which was how I learned about it in the first place. https://youtu.be/k1kndKWJKB8

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petesergeant ◴[08 Dec 25 08:02 UTC] No.46189620[source]▶
> The company value represented a decent fraction of the national gdp at the time.

The company's market-cap was almost 3 times national GDP

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maratc ◴[08 Dec 25 08:15 UTC] No.46189694[source]▶
We should stop comparing incomparable things, like companies market cap (measured in dollars or pounds) to national GDPs (measured in dollars or pounds per year,) unless we want to reach outrageous but incorrect conclusions.
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1. antonvs ◴[08 Dec 25 09:08 UTC] No.46190068[source]▶
What’s the issue? If a market cap is three times an annual GDP, it means it would take three years of that economy’s entire production to purchase the company. It’s obviously a very fuzzy measure for various reasons, but it can give some idea of the market value of a company.