Apple regains a $3 trillion market cap and is on track to end the year as the world's most valuable company for the 5th time in a row

• Apple's market capitalization passed the $3 trillion threshold for the first time in four months Tuesday.
• Its shares closed 2% higher, extending its gains for 2023 to 49%.

Apple passed the $3 trillion threshold once again Tuesday, with the Cupertino, CA-based tech giant on course to finish the year as the world's most-valuable company for the fifth time in a row.

Shares had climbed 2% by the end of the trading session, which boosted Apple's total market capitalization to $3.01 trillion, according to data from Refinitiv.

It's the first time since August that the company has been worth more than $3 trillion, after a so-so couple of months where concerns about its reliance on sales in China weighed on shares. Apple's earnings report for the July-September quarter showed its revenue from the Asian nation dropped 2.5%, amid signs that the world's second-largest economy is faltering with growth stagnating and property prices tumbling.

After Tuesday, Apple is up 49% in 2023. That's added nearly $1 trillion to its total market cap, by Business Insider's calculations.

It's comfortably outperforming the benchmark S&P 500 index – but lagging five of the other "Magnificent Seven" Big Tech stocks, with Nvidia, Facebook parent Meta Platforms, Tesla, Amazon, and Microsoft all racking up larger gains year-to-date.

Still, as long as Apple can hold off Microsoft — worth $2.74 trillion as of Tuesday's close — 2023 will see it extend a run of dominance that started in 2012.

Apple has been the world's most valuable company at the end of December every year since then except for in 2018, when Microsoft briefly snatched its crown.