By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

What's the significance of Apple (AAPL) crossing $300? Not much, frankly. In fact, I am reminded of Hyman Roth's eulogy of the dearly departed Moe Greene -- $300 seems no more than a "desert stopover for GIs on the way to the West Coast." I believe that $300 will not warrant a plaque or a signpost or a statue on the way to much higher prices for the computer and entertainment giant.

 

On Tuesday, in my talk at the 92nd Street Y, I again had to remind people that Apple had now gone from $200 to $300 in the past year and that $400 wouldn't be so extreme. We would accept such a move from most companies that are doing well, with accelerating fundamentals.

 

Of course we are bumping up against all sorts of other constraints: the law of large numbers, the disbelief that this company could be worth more than Exxon (XOM) one day and worth more than Microsoft (MSFT) today. The recognition that when we put so-called outrageous valuations like Apple's on stocks before, in the 1999 time frame, it all ended badly.

 

You always fear rationalizing a move like this that creates such a huge market capitalization. But the best way to envision what is happening here isn't just that Apple could earn $22 a share in fiscal 2011 or that it might have $100 billion in revenue if dreams of 40 million iPad sales and a Verizon (VZ) iPhone pickup come true.

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It's what's in Apple's wake that matters. If you go listen to Intel's (INTC) conference call, you are going to hear a confident Intel talking about its entry into the tablet market. But maybe Apple is going to Zune the iPad market (to use as a metaphor the perhaps better musical gizmo from Microsoft).

 

Maybe Apple can do the same thing to the entire PC and mobile device market that it did to music? Is that worth only the additional $100 billion in market cap that the company has tacked on since the release of the iPad and the new iPhone? Do we really think that only $100 billion in value has been destroyed by this behemoth?

 

Yeah, to me, $300 a share isn't much at all. It's Vegas.

 

California beckons.

 

At the time of publication, Cramer was long Apple and Intel.

 

Jim Cramer is co-founder and chairman of TheStreet. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO.

 

Click here to follow Cramer's trades for his Charitable Trust.

 

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