By the end of 2023, these five companies together held a market capitalization of $7.4 trillion, a value bigger than the gross domestic product of all but two countries; only the U.S. and China are bigger than FAANG. However, total net income for the FAANG companies in 2023 was only $225 billion, a lot of which came from Apple's lucrative iPhone sales, so the massive market capitalization of FAANG is an extreme form of investor speculation.

XREF: Plausibly connects to market valuation theory and the ratio of price to underlying earnings.

Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, loc. 314