What if you bought Apple in 1990?
US Tech · Hardware. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play833.3× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Apple at the start of 1990 would be worth about $833,333 today — 833.3 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Apple spent the early 1990s as a respected but shrinking computer maker, losing the platform war to Windows and burning through chief executives. By 1997 it was close enough to the edge that a Microsoft investment counted as a lifeline, and Steve Jobs returned via the acquisition of NeXT. The colourful iMac stabilised things, the iPod in 2001 turned a computer company into a consumer electronics company, and the dot-com crash still managed to knock the shares back below their 1990s levels by 2003.
Then came the iPhone in 2007, which did not so much enter the phone market as replace it. The App Store, the iPad and a services business layered on top of an installed base of more than a billion devices made Apple the first US company worth a trillion dollars in 2018, and later several trillion. Under Tim Cook the story shifted from invention to extraction: buybacks on a historic scale, steady price increases and a toll booth on every app sold. A 1990 buyer who held through the near-death years was paid almost absurdly well.
The lesson: 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.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $0.3 | $833,333 | $19,429 | 833.3× |
| 1995 | $0.35 | $714,286 | $14,783 | 714.3× |
| 2000 | $0.9 | $277,778 | $4,626 | 277.8× |
| 2003 | $0.26 | $961,538 | $7,727 | 961.5× |
| 2005 | $1.15 | $217,391 | $5,763 | 217.4× |
| 2007 | $3.00 | $83,333 | $4,789 | 83.3× |
| 2008 | $7.00 | $35,714 | $4,626 | 35.7× |
| 2010 | $7.50 | $33,333 | $6,071 | 33.3× |
| 2012 | $14.70 | $17,007 | $5,312 | 17.0× |
| 2015 | $27.00 | $9,259 | $3,301 | 9.3× |
| 2018 | $43.00 | $5,814 | $2,519 | 5.8× |
| 2020 | $75.00 | $3,333 | $2,092 | 3.3× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $961,538. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
On this day
- 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
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. Apple is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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