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Palantir could be the most overvalued company that ever existed

(247wallst.com)
164 points Anon84 | 3 comments | 08 Dec 25 04:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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omnicognate ◴[08 Dec 25 08:27 UTC] No.46189775[source]▶
It's a dubious comparison but not because of "per year". The comparison is implicitly to one year's worth of GDP, which is a currency amount.

It's dubious because whereas a year's worth of GDP has some claim to actually being the value of something (with many caveats but it's engineered to behave like that as much as possible), market cap isn't. It's the amount all the shares would cost if someone bought them all in one go for the price some shares were most recently purchased for, which would never happen.

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1. nrhrjrjrjtntbt ◴[08 Dec 25 10:41 UTC] No.46190775[source]▶
Er... happens all the time sir. Happened to me (Hashicorp shares)

Market cap being rediculous is the hallmark of a bubble.

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2. omnicognate ◴[08 Dec 25 12:22 UTC] No.46191432[source]▶
Hashicorp was bought for $35 per share at a time when it was trading a little above $25. Not saying crazy market caps aren't a sign of a bubble (not sure how you'd read that in my comment), just that market cap is not the value of the company.
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3. nrhrjrjrjtntbt ◴[08 Dec 25 20:10 UTC] No.46196998[source]▶
Variation in price doesn't prove that the market cap is not (a good estimate of) the company value for highly liquid stocks.

Value is subjective. Stock prices measure peoples perception of the value. Your thesis that it is incorrect can only come from 2 places (I think)

1. Dumb money - the market cant see that XYZ is overvalued or undervalued. My rebutal there is nonetheless XYZ has been valued by a conpletely open continuous auction that people are not restricted to participate in.

2. The parts are less than their sum. This may be somewhat true... total control over a company may be more (or less) valuable than splitting. But I dont think it is order of magnitude. And if it is, it is because the value to you isnt the value to me (the value of RAM to a gamer < value of RAM to OpenAI).