12 December 1980: Apple goes public
Apple Computer sold shares to the public at $22 each, in the biggest IPO since Ford in 1956. The stock jumped about 30 percent on the first day, instantly creating several hundred millionaires. Massachusetts barred residents from buying, calling the shares too risky. Investors who bought at the IPO and held faced long stretches of disappointment, including near-bankruptcy in the 1990s, before the iPod era made them rich.
The lesson: Owning a great company long-term requires surviving the years when it looks broken.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Apple at the start of 1990 → $833,333 today, vs $19,429 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 1990, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 833.3 times the money, and $813,905 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $0.3 | $833,333 | $19,429 |
| 1995 | $0.35 | $714,286 | $14,783 |
| 2000 | $0.9 | $277,778 | $4,626 |
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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