iTrillion: Apple is this close to $1,000,000,000,000

Why Apple is inches away from $1 trillion valuation
Why Apple is inches away from $1 trillion valuation

Apple may come pretty darn close to finally topping a trillion dollar market valuation Wednesday.

The stock price needs to clear $203 per share to hit the historic milestone.

Shares of Apple (AAPL) were trading above $201 in late afternoon trading Wednesday, up nearly 6% to an all time high. That lifted its market cap to about $990 billion.

The price increase comes after the company reported strong earnings and a healthy outlook Tuesday.

Wall Street doesn't think it will take long for Apple's stock price to move past the trillion dollar threshold. The current consensus price target for Apple's stock is $210.64, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.

The most bullish Apple analyst on Wall Street, Brian White of Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co., has a price target of $275 a share. That would value Apple at $1.35 trillion.

Apple isn't the only tech giant closing in on a trillion dollar mark though. Amazon (AMZN) is worth $870 billion. Google owner Alphabet (GOOGL) has a market valuation of nearly $850 billion. And Microsoft's (MSFT) market cap is now just under $815 billion.

Related: Watch 'Markets Now' here Wednesday at 12:45 p.m. ET

Wall Street has been speculating about which of these companies will hit the trillion dollar level first and how long it might be before all four of them are worth at least that much.

But if Apple, Microsoft, Google or Amazon eventually top the trillion dollar mark, none of them would be the first publicly traded company in the world to do so.

Oil giant PetroChina (PTR) briefly surpassed a trillion dollar valuation in 2007 when its stock began trading in Shanghai, but shares quickly plunged. PetroChina, which is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, is now worth about $210 billion.

CNNMoney Sponsors