What the Market Prices Into the Largest US Stocks: October 2026

Last updated October 29, 2026·6 min read

This is a monthly measurement, not a forecast. Take the ten largest American companies by market value, hold the valuation settings constant, and solve each price backwards: what annual growth in free cash flow, sustained for five years, would make today's price the fair value? The answer is the market's own assumption, stated in the open where it can be argued with. This edition uses prices and filing figures from October 29, 2026, and the same reverse DCF method explained in the reverse DCF guide in this series.

The Standard Settings

Every company is read on identical terms, so the table compares prices rather than modeling choices: trailing twelve months free cash flow per share as the base; five years at the solved growth rate; five more years at the midpoint between that rate and 3 percent; perpetual growth of 3 percent after year ten; a discount rate of 9 percent for every company; net cash per share added at the end. One exception is flagged in its row: where a company's trailing cash flow is negative because of a building cycle, the base is the median of its last three fiscal years instead, the same fallback the Studio's engine uses when a base period misleads. As a check on the method, these settings applied to Apple at its October 27 price reproduce the Studio's own published implied growth rate exactly, 15.7 percent.

The Table

How to Read the Rows

NVIDIA, 17.5 percent. The notable row in the table is the one that is not extreme. The market's favorite growth company is priced for five years of cash flow growth under 18 percent, off a trailing base that has already multiplied. Against a record that includes a fiscal year of 66 percent free cash flow growth, the price asks for competence, not miracles. Whether the base itself is a peak is the real argument, and it is an argument about the base, not the rate.

Apple, 16.0 percent. A company of $137 billion of trailing free cash flow priced for 16 percent compound growth is being asked to add roughly a second Apple of cash flow within the decade. The company's own recent history includes years well above and well below that rate. The price assumes the strong version of the company shows up five years running.

Microsoft, 24.4 percent, and Alphabet, 25.3 percent. Read these two with the base warning first. Both are spending at historic rates on data centers: Microsoft's capital spending reached $115,948 million in fiscal 2026, which depresses the trailing free cash flow the screen uses as its base. A depressed base inflates the implied rate, because the price is being explained from a smaller starting step. The honest sentence is narrower: if the current spending trough is temporary, the market's true growth assumption is lower than these figures; if the spending is the new normal, the figures stand.

Amazon, 30.9 percent, on the median base. Amazon's trailing free cash flow is negative $11,625 million, because capital spending of the same data center wave runs ahead of operating cash flow. The screen therefore uses the median of the last three fiscal years, $32,217 million, as flagged. Even on that kinder base, the price requires nearly 31 percent compound growth for five years. Treat this row as the table's least settled: its answer depends on a base choice its neighbors did not need.

Broadcom, 18.5 percent, and Meta Platforms, 21.0 percent. Both sit in the band this table calls demanding but arguable: rates their own records have touched in strong stretches, now required as a five-year average rather than a good year. Meta's base is cleaner than most, with trailing free cash flow of $28,649 million against modest net debt per share already counted in the settings.

Tesla, 64.4 percent. This is the screen reporting a price that the cash flow frame cannot carry. The trailing base is $0.84 of free cash flow per share, after a stretch in which capital spending absorbed most of a shrinking operating flow. On the latest fiscal year's base instead, the implied rate is still 51.3 percent. No five-year plan in the company's filings supports either figure, which means the price is not a cash flow price at all. It is a price on future businesses that do not yet file financial statements. The screen cannot value those, and says so by printing an impossible number.

Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, not run. The two financial names are excluded by design, not by missing data. The feed carries no free cash flow figure for JPMorgan, because a bank's deposits and loans make the standard construction meaningless, and Berkshire is an insurer at its core, whose cash flow swings with investment results. The sector guide in this series covers the tools that fit them. A measurement series that forces one frame onto every company would print a number for these two, and the number would be the least honest row in the table.

What This Measurement Is For

Implied growth is a discipline for comparing prices, not a ranking of companies. The cheapest-looking row can hide a peaked base, as NVIDIA's might. The most expensive-looking row can be a price on a business the statements do not yet describe, as Tesla's is. What the table gives a reader is the assumption inside each price, in one unit, on one date, computed one way. Arguments about these stocks get shorter when they start there. The ten names make a ready watchlist for a charting platform such as TradingView, where each price can be watched against the assumption printed for it until the next edition.

Sources and Method Notes

• Prices, share counts, net cash, and trailing free cash flow from the Maineblock feed record of October 29, 2026, built from each company's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, public at SEC EDGAR. Market value is price times the share count the feed carries.
• Amazon's median base is the median of fiscal 2023, 2024, and 2025 free cash flow: $32,217 million, $32,878 million, and $7,695 million.
• The next edition recomputes every row from fresh filings and prices. Past editions are measurements of their dates and are not restated.