An economic downturn almost always favors giants like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon,

the country’s three most valuable companies. But the demand for their shares has only
been amplified by a crisis that seems almost tailor-made for their future success.
Even as analysts have trimmed expectations for all three companies’ quarterly earnings,
which they’ll report this week, their stocks are climbing. Their combined value rose
more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars since the recent market low — more than
the cumulative gain of the bottom half of all stocks in the S&P 500.
Investors are betting, in part, that the Covid-19 crisis accelerates the already growing
power of America’s corporate colossuses.
“The firms that were the top dogs going into the crisis also happen to have the most
resilient business models because they can do everything online,” said Thomas
Philippon, a professor of finance at New York University. “It turns out Amazon was one
of the most successful businesses in the U.S., and on top of it, they are the ones who can
keep processing orders.”
Besides benefiting from their gargantuan size, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are all
sitting on mountains of cash that will make them largely immune to the funding
squeezes other companies are experiencing.