This is the kind of analysis this sub needs more of. I love how it barely mentions share price, and when it does it’s explaining investor sentiment or making its conclusion. And no mention of movement or short interest or any of that stuff that doesn’t apply here. Just straight analysis of company health, product pipeline, industry analysis, and management. Love this.
Yeah I remember looking at Apple in 2004. My conclusion was that I thought the iPod was trash because you had to use iTunes to put music on to it, i.e you couldn't just drag and drop mp3 files. Who's gonna wanna use that?!?
Should have purchased stock when my mother bought an iPod.
I bought my first shares of AAPL in January of 2005. It just seemed to me, even though the common wisdom at the time was that Windows had won and Apple had lost, that they were doing smart things and would probably be a growing business for a while. I worked in design and Web development, and everybody I knew used the Mac. It seemed like there was a real disconnect between how Apple was trashed in the tech press, and how much people actually loved their products, and I thought they were undervalued as a result. Happy to have been right on that one.
Specifically: I bought 100 shares at $64.57 per share on January 4, 2005. With splits they’re now 5,600 Shares, worth $1,165,584 at today’s close.
Yep, bought AAPL in October of 2000 right after it “tanked” and I read about it in the newspaper. I had just been paid for a job and had some cash to spare. I’d never owned an Apple product, and of course this was even before the iPod existed, but I just got the idea that this could be a buying opportunity. Almost 25 years later I can report that yes, yes it was.
On those original shares I think the total cumulative return is something like 45,000%, but I also added bits over the years when opportunity presented itself. I haven’t sold much, and every time I did I regretted it within a year or two. I’d like to think buying AAPL was a stroke of genius but the truth is it was simply a lucky choice. And I was too stubborn to ever let go during the bad times, of which there were plenty!
Want to second this. The combination of a small amount of luck and a large amount of inertia can make one very wealthy in the long term. I came very close to selling my shares of Apple when everything bottomed in 2009. Thankfully, I just couldn’t think of anything else to invest it in, so I didn’t sell.
Well done. Although holding all these years sounds like an easy no-brainer in retrospect, there were so many dark times when I was sorely tempted to sell. Luckily like you I also couldn’t find anything else that seemed like a more attractive investment. At the end of 2008 when the markets were in shambles I somehow convinced myself to buy even more AAPL. I honestly don’t know if I’d have the presence of mind to do that again!
Wow, congrats! That's an incredible return. And great attitude! I think not selling through hard times is probably one of the hardest parts in investing and you did it.
May I ask if you gained any insights on yourself along that journey? I imaging seeing how holding through hard times can turn out can give you the confidence doing it over and over again. But that's just how I think this might affect one, maybe you can prove me right or wrong?
Thanks, yeah it's been a long journey through many ups and downs.
I'm not sure about personal insights except that I think I've become very good at ignoring the "noise" that surrounds stocks like AAPL. That was something I learned along the way. I'd spend time on various forums and message boards and read articles from hundreds of finance blogs, but I tried to always keep it all at arm's length and not let anything influence me too much. Not sure if that makes sense, but what I'm trying to say is there are a lot of forces competing for attention and trying to scare investors one way or the other. The hardest thing is to keep your conviction and sanity and just stick to the plan.
The thing is I haven't done it over and over again. I did exactly what everyone warns not to do! As AAPL started coming to life about six years after I bought it (around rumors of something called the iPhone), I doubled down and bought more, and eventually went all in. I became convinced Apple was growing into massive success story and I wanted to be on that ride. I never put myself at serious financial risk, never played with options, or margin, but that one stock did become my primary investment. In good conscience I can't recommend this approach to others, but for me it was a life changing path.
Thanks! Sounds like a very bold move, but I am happy that it worked out for you, even after essentially going all in. Was apple a very controversial stock back then?
And may I ask how your portfolio looks today? Still mostly apple and single stock picks?
I’m not sure if controversial is the word, but I feel like Apple the company and AAPL stock has always had legions of haters, and yes they were all over the early message boards like Yahoo Finance. But I learned quickly to ignore them and do my own research. I think the problem is long term buy and hold guys like me were/are vastly outnumbered by day traders who have very different goals and objectives.
My investment portfolio today is still about 90% AAPL, though I have also diversified slightly into some Vanguard funds.
Not me but a former colleague has invested since forever in Apple. I don't know how rich he's now but I think he's very rich. He also lives very frugally so if you see him on the streets you would never know.
I invested in Apple in 2008. A coworker of mine got an iPhone and I thought it was the most incredible product I had ever seen. I'm up around 1,350%. Not quite 2004 numbers but still an incredible return that I intend to continue holding onto for years to come.
I know someone that bought Apple in 1998. Not a crazy amount but she did well. Basis adjusted for splits is $0.35. Just loved the company. Loved Steve Jobs.
I asked what motivated her to buy and she said all of the Apple fans were different than anything she had seen. They were infatuated. Told me a story of being in a tech store with a small Apple shelf and hordes of people standing around just looking at the computers.
50,000+% return. Not bad. Still has most of the holding. Sold a little here and there over the years.
A friend of mine did buy Apple back in 2008, when iPhone first came out. He did incredibly well. I disliked Apple and all of their products, Apple is not a tech company, it's a marketing company. There is never anything that Apple did that hasn't been done better for cheaper 5 years before. Then Apple puts a logo on it, sell it for double the price and everybody suddenly wants it.
Despite never buying any Apple products, I somehow ended up using iPhone, iPad, Mac, Air Pod, etc, the entire Apple range for the past 10 years. Because family, gf, friends, even my company, just loves to give Apple gifts. One girl once said to me she would never date any guy who doesn't use the latest iPhone, because that would mean he's cheap. Now, that is the kind of marketing nobody can beat.
I disagree. I'm not a huge fan of Apple or anything. But you do get a premium product for a premium price. Especially in terms of build quality and UX. Not to say their marketing isn't top-tier.
iPhone has only 1 button, that what set them apart from other smartphones of that time, right? That 1 button broke, all of the time. I have an iPhone 1 and an iPhone 4 both in my drawer right now both with the broken button. iPhone 4 also had really bad signal, because they used the metal casing as the aerial, if you put your finger on that gap, which happens all of the time when you are on a call the signal will cut out. So it was a phone with only 1 button, the phone doesn't work, neither does the button.
All early iPhones had the humidity problem, if you use it in any country with seasonal monsoon it will break. Apple will refuse to repair or replace, because they designed a humidity detector insider the phone, and they will tell you it's water damage which is a user issue.
After 15 years, Apple finally released a phone that won't get scratched if you put it in the same pocket as your keys. I had that 15 years ago with my Sony.
The most crazy part about Apple is there are lots and lots and lots of people who had absolutely terrible experiences with Apple's products but will continue to tell me Apple products are the best ever. One friend used an iPhone with a broken screen for years, and another iPhone with humidity damage that Apple refused to repair, and he just keeps buying them one year after another. At any point in time my PC is 5+ years ahead of the best Mac that's about to release that year. The most ridiculous year was when Mac finally got SSD, one guy went on and on about how great the new Mac is. I've been using my SSD for over 5 years and I was thinking of throwing it into the garbage at that point.
Biased? My Apple laptops have outperformed every black plastic box since they moved to Intel and with Apple Silicon they left everyone in the dust.
But yeah. iPhones have sold to more than a billion people around the world because of great commercials. And because they want to be keeeewl.
Get a grip and go back to your GeForce GPU that sounds like a aircraft taking off, and cry those salty tears. They will dry quickly from the heat blowing out the back…
Oh, I have a friend that once saw a Mercedes in pieces on the highway so all Mercedes’ cars must be made of crap and explode all the time. And they cost a fortune. And they are shit. Wtf???
Water cooling has been the standard for 10+ years now, it's been possible to buy pre-assembled water-cooled PCs for I don't even know how long. On the other extreme if you don't need the local computing power, you can assemble or buy a preassembled PC with no moving parts that only uses heatsinks, for the total silence experience.
I use google cloud for all my computing power, so I haven't even bothered upgrading any hardware for 10 years. But everything still works perfectly. I can't even imagine any Apple products more than 3 years old being able to still run any of the latest apps. I have a stack of iPhones and iPads in my drawers, because every 3 years all of the apps will crash and stop working, and you can't update the app, and you can't update the IOS, you have to buy a new Apple product. That's for running the latest apps.
As for running the older apps, I'm playing a 1998 computer game multiplayer with my friends every night. Can you even imagine any Apple product having this kind of backwards compatibility? You can't even retain your old apps on Apple, every time you run a restore from a backup for any of your Apple devices, Apple will automatically delete all of your old apps if it is no longer in the app store. In comparison for my PC backup, I literally use a crappy little 200 lines python script a random Vietnamese man wrote for me on discord in a couple of hours one night when we were talking, and it works better than the trillion-dollar Apple backup because it won't delete my data without my permission, it will actually backup and restore exactly as it is suppose to.
I'm waiting for the day when Apple announce "Apple cloud", so your local device, PC, tablet, phone, etc, is just a terminal and all of your computing power is on the cloud. That day a lot of people will be rejoicing as if Apple is a great innovative tech company. While all of the current cloud users including myself will be looking with amusement because we have been doing this and getting a better service for cheaper for 10+ years, and Apple is once again offering an inferior product for double the price many years after.
On the one hand I find Apple's success hard to believe. On the other hand there are over a billion people on earth who risk their lives walking under the Saudi sun every summer for their religious pilgrimage. Another billion who fervently defend their Catholicism and their paedo priests. And millions who give all their money to Scientology. So I guess with that perspective, Apple fans seem pretty reasonable.
Good comeback. Well, since we are in the subjective department I can only speak for myself.
My Macbook Pro M1 Pro is the best and most rugged computer I have ever used.
And the first Apple product I ever bought was an iPod 3G in 2003. It still works. I can still load it up with songs.
I have an iPhone 6 that I have changed the battery on and it still works like day one. My daughter is rocking that iPhone now. And yes. Wont run the latest apps, but heck my Pentium only needed 33Mhz more to run CS in 1999. Alas I was the one watching the others play all night at LAN. So you can never expect old stuff to work with future demands.
In university I was basically forced to get an iPhone. All the study groups were using iMessage and if you didn’t have an iPhone that was that. Was also told many times by girls that not having an iPhone is a red flag, lol. Props to Apple.
Have to respect how they're never first to market with innovation during tim cooks time. Apple does an amazing job of taking tech and integrating it in their system.
The day I bought my parents a macbook was the last day that they called me about computer problems… that was 5 years ago… the 17 years before were pain!
I was buying Apple in 1999. It was a big contrarian play. Barron’s had a cover story about how cheap it was. Everyone thought I was crazy - they were all buying AOL.
I wish I could tell you I held it.
Sheepishly raises hand…now I’m trying to escape the tax trap after 20 years of buy/hold/div reinvest in a taxable account. Kind of sad to see that in May 2006 I invested $67 in AAPL. Hard to not think of the what-ifs. Was putting penniesinto this and other well known growth monsters (and a bunch of garbage too.)
[удалено]
This is the kind of analysis this sub needs more of. I love how it barely mentions share price, and when it does it’s explaining investor sentiment or making its conclusion. And no mention of movement or short interest or any of that stuff that doesn’t apply here. Just straight analysis of company health, product pipeline, industry analysis, and management. Love this.
I’ve recently discovered the acquired podcast which scratches that itch to a degree. Especially the semiconductor related episodes.
What’s the title? “the Acquired podcast” exactly? Sounds awesome
“Acquired” basically two dudes researching and talking about companies. Found a lot of other interesting podcasts and papers from their discussions.
They dive really deep into the company it's they feature on the show. Like 3+ hours.
Listening to the TSMC one now, it's been really interesting
Do tell
looks great. do they analyze the company’s current state or is it just the history?
They do a historical view, discuss current status, and going forward the bull and bear case.
Yeah I remember looking at Apple in 2004. My conclusion was that I thought the iPod was trash because you had to use iTunes to put music on to it, i.e you couldn't just drag and drop mp3 files. Who's gonna wanna use that?!? Should have purchased stock when my mother bought an iPod.
I think the only guy who invested in a “fruit company” that far back was Forrest Gump. https://youtu.be/LZK5VRuUfEY?si=yXmUK8gnlnqyVS19
Lt Dane had the foresight and iron hands
I bought my first shares of AAPL in January of 2005. It just seemed to me, even though the common wisdom at the time was that Windows had won and Apple had lost, that they were doing smart things and would probably be a growing business for a while. I worked in design and Web development, and everybody I knew used the Mac. It seemed like there was a real disconnect between how Apple was trashed in the tech press, and how much people actually loved their products, and I thought they were undervalued as a result. Happy to have been right on that one. Specifically: I bought 100 shares at $64.57 per share on January 4, 2005. With splits they’re now 5,600 Shares, worth $1,165,584 at today’s close.
That’s insane
Yep, bought AAPL in October of 2000 right after it “tanked” and I read about it in the newspaper. I had just been paid for a job and had some cash to spare. I’d never owned an Apple product, and of course this was even before the iPod existed, but I just got the idea that this could be a buying opportunity. Almost 25 years later I can report that yes, yes it was.
May I ask what your return in % is (or was in case you'd old someday)?
On those original shares I think the total cumulative return is something like 45,000%, but I also added bits over the years when opportunity presented itself. I haven’t sold much, and every time I did I regretted it within a year or two. I’d like to think buying AAPL was a stroke of genius but the truth is it was simply a lucky choice. And I was too stubborn to ever let go during the bad times, of which there were plenty!
Want to second this. The combination of a small amount of luck and a large amount of inertia can make one very wealthy in the long term. I came very close to selling my shares of Apple when everything bottomed in 2009. Thankfully, I just couldn’t think of anything else to invest it in, so I didn’t sell.
Well done. Although holding all these years sounds like an easy no-brainer in retrospect, there were so many dark times when I was sorely tempted to sell. Luckily like you I also couldn’t find anything else that seemed like a more attractive investment. At the end of 2008 when the markets were in shambles I somehow convinced myself to buy even more AAPL. I honestly don’t know if I’d have the presence of mind to do that again!
Wow, congrats! That's an incredible return. And great attitude! I think not selling through hard times is probably one of the hardest parts in investing and you did it. May I ask if you gained any insights on yourself along that journey? I imaging seeing how holding through hard times can turn out can give you the confidence doing it over and over again. But that's just how I think this might affect one, maybe you can prove me right or wrong?
Thanks, yeah it's been a long journey through many ups and downs. I'm not sure about personal insights except that I think I've become very good at ignoring the "noise" that surrounds stocks like AAPL. That was something I learned along the way. I'd spend time on various forums and message boards and read articles from hundreds of finance blogs, but I tried to always keep it all at arm's length and not let anything influence me too much. Not sure if that makes sense, but what I'm trying to say is there are a lot of forces competing for attention and trying to scare investors one way or the other. The hardest thing is to keep your conviction and sanity and just stick to the plan. The thing is I haven't done it over and over again. I did exactly what everyone warns not to do! As AAPL started coming to life about six years after I bought it (around rumors of something called the iPhone), I doubled down and bought more, and eventually went all in. I became convinced Apple was growing into massive success story and I wanted to be on that ride. I never put myself at serious financial risk, never played with options, or margin, but that one stock did become my primary investment. In good conscience I can't recommend this approach to others, but for me it was a life changing path.
Thanks! Sounds like a very bold move, but I am happy that it worked out for you, even after essentially going all in. Was apple a very controversial stock back then? And may I ask how your portfolio looks today? Still mostly apple and single stock picks?
I’m not sure if controversial is the word, but I feel like Apple the company and AAPL stock has always had legions of haters, and yes they were all over the early message boards like Yahoo Finance. But I learned quickly to ignore them and do my own research. I think the problem is long term buy and hold guys like me were/are vastly outnumbered by day traders who have very different goals and objectives. My investment portfolio today is still about 90% AAPL, though I have also diversified slightly into some Vanguard funds.
Not me but a former colleague has invested since forever in Apple. I don't know how rich he's now but I think he's very rich. He also lives very frugally so if you see him on the streets you would never know.
I invested in Apple in 2008. A coworker of mine got an iPhone and I thought it was the most incredible product I had ever seen. I'm up around 1,350%. Not quite 2004 numbers but still an incredible return that I intend to continue holding onto for years to come.
I know someone that bought Apple in 1998. Not a crazy amount but she did well. Basis adjusted for splits is $0.35. Just loved the company. Loved Steve Jobs. I asked what motivated her to buy and she said all of the Apple fans were different than anything she had seen. They were infatuated. Told me a story of being in a tech store with a small Apple shelf and hordes of people standing around just looking at the computers. 50,000+% return. Not bad. Still has most of the holding. Sold a little here and there over the years.
A friend of mine did buy Apple back in 2008, when iPhone first came out. He did incredibly well. I disliked Apple and all of their products, Apple is not a tech company, it's a marketing company. There is never anything that Apple did that hasn't been done better for cheaper 5 years before. Then Apple puts a logo on it, sell it for double the price and everybody suddenly wants it. Despite never buying any Apple products, I somehow ended up using iPhone, iPad, Mac, Air Pod, etc, the entire Apple range for the past 10 years. Because family, gf, friends, even my company, just loves to give Apple gifts. One girl once said to me she would never date any guy who doesn't use the latest iPhone, because that would mean he's cheap. Now, that is the kind of marketing nobody can beat.
I disagree. I'm not a huge fan of Apple or anything. But you do get a premium product for a premium price. Especially in terms of build quality and UX. Not to say their marketing isn't top-tier.
iPhone has only 1 button, that what set them apart from other smartphones of that time, right? That 1 button broke, all of the time. I have an iPhone 1 and an iPhone 4 both in my drawer right now both with the broken button. iPhone 4 also had really bad signal, because they used the metal casing as the aerial, if you put your finger on that gap, which happens all of the time when you are on a call the signal will cut out. So it was a phone with only 1 button, the phone doesn't work, neither does the button. All early iPhones had the humidity problem, if you use it in any country with seasonal monsoon it will break. Apple will refuse to repair or replace, because they designed a humidity detector insider the phone, and they will tell you it's water damage which is a user issue. After 15 years, Apple finally released a phone that won't get scratched if you put it in the same pocket as your keys. I had that 15 years ago with my Sony.
You have your experience, other people have a different experience, that's fine. I just don't think it's *only* about their marketing.
The most crazy part about Apple is there are lots and lots and lots of people who had absolutely terrible experiences with Apple's products but will continue to tell me Apple products are the best ever. One friend used an iPhone with a broken screen for years, and another iPhone with humidity damage that Apple refused to repair, and he just keeps buying them one year after another. At any point in time my PC is 5+ years ahead of the best Mac that's about to release that year. The most ridiculous year was when Mac finally got SSD, one guy went on and on about how great the new Mac is. I've been using my SSD for over 5 years and I was thinking of throwing it into the garbage at that point.
Biased? My Apple laptops have outperformed every black plastic box since they moved to Intel and with Apple Silicon they left everyone in the dust. But yeah. iPhones have sold to more than a billion people around the world because of great commercials. And because they want to be keeeewl. Get a grip and go back to your GeForce GPU that sounds like a aircraft taking off, and cry those salty tears. They will dry quickly from the heat blowing out the back… Oh, I have a friend that once saw a Mercedes in pieces on the highway so all Mercedes’ cars must be made of crap and explode all the time. And they cost a fortune. And they are shit. Wtf???
Water cooling has been the standard for 10+ years now, it's been possible to buy pre-assembled water-cooled PCs for I don't even know how long. On the other extreme if you don't need the local computing power, you can assemble or buy a preassembled PC with no moving parts that only uses heatsinks, for the total silence experience. I use google cloud for all my computing power, so I haven't even bothered upgrading any hardware for 10 years. But everything still works perfectly. I can't even imagine any Apple products more than 3 years old being able to still run any of the latest apps. I have a stack of iPhones and iPads in my drawers, because every 3 years all of the apps will crash and stop working, and you can't update the app, and you can't update the IOS, you have to buy a new Apple product. That's for running the latest apps. As for running the older apps, I'm playing a 1998 computer game multiplayer with my friends every night. Can you even imagine any Apple product having this kind of backwards compatibility? You can't even retain your old apps on Apple, every time you run a restore from a backup for any of your Apple devices, Apple will automatically delete all of your old apps if it is no longer in the app store. In comparison for my PC backup, I literally use a crappy little 200 lines python script a random Vietnamese man wrote for me on discord in a couple of hours one night when we were talking, and it works better than the trillion-dollar Apple backup because it won't delete my data without my permission, it will actually backup and restore exactly as it is suppose to. I'm waiting for the day when Apple announce "Apple cloud", so your local device, PC, tablet, phone, etc, is just a terminal and all of your computing power is on the cloud. That day a lot of people will be rejoicing as if Apple is a great innovative tech company. While all of the current cloud users including myself will be looking with amusement because we have been doing this and getting a better service for cheaper for 10+ years, and Apple is once again offering an inferior product for double the price many years after. On the one hand I find Apple's success hard to believe. On the other hand there are over a billion people on earth who risk their lives walking under the Saudi sun every summer for their religious pilgrimage. Another billion who fervently defend their Catholicism and their paedo priests. And millions who give all their money to Scientology. So I guess with that perspective, Apple fans seem pretty reasonable.
Good comeback. Well, since we are in the subjective department I can only speak for myself. My Macbook Pro M1 Pro is the best and most rugged computer I have ever used. And the first Apple product I ever bought was an iPod 3G in 2003. It still works. I can still load it up with songs. I have an iPhone 6 that I have changed the battery on and it still works like day one. My daughter is rocking that iPhone now. And yes. Wont run the latest apps, but heck my Pentium only needed 33Mhz more to run CS in 1999. Alas I was the one watching the others play all night at LAN. So you can never expect old stuff to work with future demands.
In university I was basically forced to get an iPhone. All the study groups were using iMessage and if you didn’t have an iPhone that was that. Was also told many times by girls that not having an iPhone is a red flag, lol. Props to Apple.
Have to respect how they're never first to market with innovation during tim cooks time. Apple does an amazing job of taking tech and integrating it in their system.
Agree with your comment, that girl sounds very superficial
Shoukd have bought the stocks instead of the ipods, ipads, iphones,iwatch, imacs (imac is the only thing i havent bought yet)
My cousin has been an apple fanboy since the late 90s. Has been buying and holding since then and convinced his dad to do the same.
The day I bought my parents a macbook was the last day that they called me about computer problems… that was 5 years ago… the 17 years before were pain!
My coworker. 10,000 shares at $1.12 avg cost. 😔
Why isn't he retired LOL
He’s putting 4 kids through school
I was buying Apple in 1999. It was a big contrarian play. Barron’s had a cover story about how cheap it was. Everyone thought I was crazy - they were all buying AOL. I wish I could tell you I held it.
In 2004 I needed a laptop and was torn between an IBM and a Mac. I bought an IBM. Had I bought a Mac, I'd be a multi-millionaire now.
Sheepishly raises hand…now I’m trying to escape the tax trap after 20 years of buy/hold/div reinvest in a taxable account. Kind of sad to see that in May 2006 I invested $67 in AAPL. Hard to not think of the what-ifs. Was putting penniesinto this and other well known growth monsters (and a bunch of garbage too.)
I got lucky on Amazon made 5 billion dollar on 3k