2 August 2018: Apple becomes the first trillion-dollar US company
Apple's shares rose after strong results and the company closed with a market value above $1 trillion, the first US public company to do so. Two decades earlier Apple had been close to running out of cash. The iPhone, services and huge buybacks did the work. Plenty of investors had called Apple a mature, low-growth company along the way, and the stock kept proving them early and wrong.
The lesson: Great businesses can keep compounding long after skeptics declare them too big to grow.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Apple at the start of 2018 → $5,814 today, vs $2,519 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2018, the year it happened. That is 5.8 times the money, and $3,295 more than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Apple teaches: The best returns often come from companies that looked finished; Apple was a near-bankrupt also-ran in 1997, which is exactly why it was cheap.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $27.00 | $9,259 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $43.00 | $5,814 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $75.00 | $3,333 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Apple? Every starting year and the full story →
More Apple history
- 2 January 2019: Tim Cook writes a letter nobody wanted to read
- 9 January 2007: Steve Jobs unveils the iPhone
- 24 January 1984: The Macintosh goes on sale
- 27 January 2010: Apple unveils the iPad
- 1 April 1976: Apple is founded, and one co-founder cashes out early
- 11 April 1976: The Apple I goes on sale for $666.66
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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