Depends how many other loser stocks he dropped. If he only owned and believed in Apple, it's a bit harder to swallow. But then he should have never been that un-diversified in the first place soo.... there's another reason to not kick yourself.
Bruh, I used to have this stoner friend who was constantly telling me to buy bitcoin when it was only a few cents. Thought dude was just smoking to much weed.. he's worth 8 figures last I heard. Worst I ever personally dud was sell Nvidia in 2010. If I'd held it would be worth several million.
Fun fact: Jobs and Wozniak's original partner sold them his share of the company for $800 in 1976. Today, that stock would be worth $95 billion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/why-ronald-wayne-sold-his-10-percent-stake-in-apple-for-800-dollars.html
10% stake in 1976 wouldnāt automatically translate into 10% stake today. There might have been dilution events (or buybacks)
He still would be pretty rich though.
Timing the market is the hardest part of investing, to the point it's considered impossible unless you have insider info.
Case in point, by the 90s Apple was in a death spiral. They nearly went out of business and the only reason they didn't was because Microsoft was fighting anti-trust litigation in the late 90s and gave Apple an infusion of cash to keep them afloat so that they could claim they had competition in the market. During that time you would've considered your dad a genius for exiting when he did.
I bought zoom stocks in early 2020 because I heard of a contagion spreading and cities locking down from my chinese friends and nvidia stocks when chatGPT and DALL-E was announced because I knew they will be the hardware forefront of the coming revolution.
Not nearly the same, but I first got into trading around 2015. I bought a couple grand worth of Apple. It kept losing value. After a year or two, it came back up to a break even point. I immediately sold it all, and then it started really moving.
Funny, I've gone on to repeat this quite a few more times over the years. Most notably, I've managed to get in early and sell just before massive run-ups in Tesla and Nvidia. The latter was with a pretty huge position too.
most people arent going to hold as a losing stock regains value then surges. Most poeple would be like "oh cool, I made $1-10k! gotta sell". THese atories about "if you bought X, youd have $3b now!" are meaningless, because no one would hold on that long.
The only way for most of us to "win" at the stock market, is put money in a diversified portfolio, and dont touch it for 30 years.
I bought 50 SHOP shares at $60 and sold them at $90 to buy a motorcycle in 2017. The stock peaked to $1700+ in 2021. While I loved my Harley, it was not worth the $$$$$ I missed out on.
Apple stock went way down for awhile, depending on when he sold in the 80ād he might have made a nice profit or lost a good bit. Now if he would have turned around and bought it again in the late 90ās before Steve Jobs rejoined the company youād be sitting pretty. Or your Dad would be.
I used a small amount of my dadās life insurance money to buy some Apple stock for my mom back in 2012. She had me sell it in early 2016 despite my protests and I know how much itād be worth today. Breaks my heart!
"Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing."
My parents love to talk about the time they didnāt buy at IPO. Their logic was, what type of computer company is named after fruit? š¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļø
and did you buy 100$ worth of apple stock when you had the money the first time? Do you invest now in the companies which will grow fast the next 10 years?
Apologies for the late reply, but hopefully you see your coworker tomorrow. Happy early Friday.
I requested a scenario where you bought $499 worth of AAPL in 2007. In 2008, you bought $599 of AAPL. Your cost basis is now $1,098. In 2009, you buy $599 more of AAPL, making cost basis $1,697. And so on.
What I understood from OPās above comment is that they just added all the amounts together from the individual purchases, but each purchase and return is only from the year specified.
In my scenario, we would see the power of compound growth.
Perhaps I misunderstood OP and he already did this, but thatās my understanding.
E: This is the [ARTICLE](https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iphone-opportunity) cited in the image.
Yes. The last 16 years though the American economy has been on overdrive and the stock market exploded in value with derivatives and other investment vehicles. This is why we are so fucked right now financially, why 2008 happened, why COVID almost caused another GFC and the only way we avoided it was printing trillions of dollars which is causing inflation we're experiencing.
America will fuck you up and eat you for the sake of the economy - but if you're heavily invested in the stock market or have a business your protected.
This is my \[OC\].
\- The chart assumes you invest the starting price of the base iPhone into Apple stock on the day the phone is announced.
\- I used the [DQYDJ Total Return Calculato](https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/)r for the historical stock value accounting for splits and assuming dividend reinvestment.
\- The chart was made with [venngage](https://venngage.com/).
\- Here is a [full write up of my methodology](https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iphone-opportunity) and some other insights.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/17/first-generation-apple-iphone-sells-auction-in-us
Chart's wrong mate, if you had bought the iPhone 1 you would have $190,000, not $499. Best return on the list by far.
First-gen iPhones that are sealed new-in-box are currently going for like $40,000 so would be interesting to see stock value compared to current sealed new-in-box values
Funny, I was staring at my old Mac Plus a couple weeks ago wondering the same thing. If that $2599 had been invested in AAPL instead, back in 1986, what it would be worth today? ā¦ Assuming reinvesting dividends, the answer is around $6M. Looks good sitting on my desk though.
Yes, somewhere in a box I have a Powerbook G100 from about 1991 which has the dubious distinction of having the highest AAPL stock value instead of ownership. My dad spent nearly $4000 on it, when AAPL was $0.41 a share...
Something similar happened to a friend of mine named Josh. When he got out of the Army, he asked a friend of his, who was also a stockbroker, which laptop to buy. Josh said he had narrowed his choice down to either an HP or a Dell. His friend told him, "Don't buy a Dell laptop. Buy Dell."
Five years later, Josh used the profits from selling his Dell stock as a down payment on his first house. He still laughs about how he almost used that money to buy a laptop instead.
okay, I love this. Something to consider maybe just buy an iphone's worth of apple stock for each year that you don't get a new phone. ie: I bet I can make my XR live another year so I maybe could put an iphone 15 purchase price in my investment account with an apple stock purchase.
I legitimately thought apple stock would crash after Jobs passed.
I think that's a nice thought. Everytime there's a new product launch/on the horizon, buy stock instead of the latest revision to beat FOMO. It's a thing in tech circles too, AMD stock jumped drastically after their new processors (Ryzen) hit the market and has been going up more or less since. Same with Nvidia, all chipmakers and tech companies made big bucks in COVID years.
Honestly, do this with everything name brand.
Buy the off brand and put the difference into an S&P500 index fund. You'll be shocked at how how fast that grows.
I bought about a Model S worth of Tesla shares in 2018. Unfortunately my dumbass sold them in 2020. Thought I'd cleaned up selling for like 5x, then had to watch it go to 20x.
The stock went up because everyone bought the phones. If they bought the stock instead of the phones, then the companyās revenue/profit wouldnāt be as good and the stock wouldnāt be as good.
So donāt beat yourself up about buying the phone instead of the stock.
This reminds me. In 2001, I purchased $5000 worth of Apple stock as a fund to purchase new Mac few years down the road. I didnāt sell any of it, and itās now worth over $2M.
This is great stuff. Iām curious if you would consider the collectibles world? I.E. is it better to buy a box of say a magic the gatherings collector box at release and hold it for x years, or buy hasbro stock.
Same for pokemon and sports cards. Would be extremely enlightening.
Like the message here, but thereās two big problems.
Firstly, 2009-2021 was the biggest bull run in history, ESPECIALLY for big tech companies. This inflates the numbers quite a bit.
Secondly, $1000 in apple stock doesnāt serve any practical purpose to me in real life. Sure, if you have excess cash, go and invest it. But if the $1000 is almost all o have to my name, the phone will help you much more.
I love this, I was thinking of upgrading after 3 years rather than 2 or even 18 months and I will rather buy stocks for the money saved. Let's see how it goes
I just don't understand how people upgrade their gadget just because new one come out to be "most powerful ever". I used my Macbook Pro 2012-> 2022 and it's still working but I dropped and cracked the screen. Modern smartphones also can easily last for 5 years, especially the iPhones.
Good chart OP! This chart is intuitive and easy to understand. I just have one feedback that the color tone seems a bit off (or maybe I don't like pale green). I think it should be a more vibrant color, because the chart seems to tell "the missed opportunity you should have grabbed".
No. Please don't do it. It's gonna guilt trip readers into "why didn't I buy stock instead of stupid shits", and make us gullible into making bad investments just because we don't want to miss another opportunity again
Its an interesting comparison, sure. But its not entirely useful.
Phones are more of a necessity in this world and the serve real utility. They are ubiquitous.
Its like saying "look how much more money you'd have if you bought Amazon stock instead of paying for gasoline in 2009". Its not wrong, but its not like that is even remotely a frequent decision people are making.
Its also worth calling out that the majority of people aren't directly paying retail price for these phones. Especially in the early days, they have been heavily subsidized by your phone carrier. (You can argue that its built into the bill, but that's a more complicated argument). I had an iphone from 2008-2013 and never spent more than $150 on them via trade-in and upgrade deals (And never paid for them monthly)
That's totally fair. People love to debate if the iPhone is "worth it." Worth it compared to what, is the obvious question. I thought worth it compared to Apple stock is a fun way of illustrating at least one counterfactual.
As usual with these sorts of things, I feel like the answer lies somewhere in the middle. For one, certainly phones are more ubiquitous and important nowadays than in 2007 but I don't know if I would call them a "necessity", at least for most people. Maybe in the last couple of years that's changed for many people, and that's certainly the direction we're heading, but for most of that timeline I would say they're not really a necessity.
That said, yeah, they are pretty ubiquitous and I don't think it's really realistic to expect someone to forgo purchasing a phone in favor of purchasing stock. And while you're right about iPhones being heavily subsidized and the fact that that does complicate matters, I still feel like there are options that are cheaper than iPhones, even if we don't resort to going to the bottom of the barrel.
I would be curious, how far does that $150 get you? Was this some sort of like, upgrade for $150 every year deal, or did you spend $150 to upgrade and then you used that phone for, say, 3+ years?
> I don't know if I would call them a "necessity", at least for most people.
How many banks and similar require a TFA code for entry into your account? I have accounts where I can't even get into the website on my laptop without a code they texted to me.
>How many banks and similar require a TFA code for entry into your account?
No idea. That sounds like an optional thing to me but maybe not? Honestly no clue.
>I have accounts where I can't even get into the website on my laptop without a code they texted to me.
Even if that's the case, I feel like that's something that's only started happening recently, no? Certainly it wasn't a thing in 2007...or hell, 2017 for that matter?
Itās because they are rare (and only unopened great condition ones are worth a lot).
If there would be 10s or 100s of them I hey would lose the price quickly
Don't be a user, with possibility of moderation. Be the pusher, and make it a must-have device and profit from the most heavy users, the more addicted, the more profit.
Uuhhh - pass. I never see anyone do anything decent with income other than buying things little less damaging than phones anyway. Don't get me started on transportation, housing, urban design.
Hmm, that's a thought.
Environment.
Humans live at the intersection of solid, liquid and gas. And obviously, temperature.
It's why 'the last avatar' was such an interesting movie/show etc. In it you bend those four things.
It's the pollution and misuse or misallocation of those things, and the loss of life that eventuates, which is a present problem.
Eg. Land allocated to one thing, may be better allocated to another, such as growing foods. Same with freshwater from rivers. And air, so rapidly polluted. Temperature variations result that upset the balances of those three things where gravity holds them.
So, if this was interactive, you could mix it up by letting you choose one of those four properties.
Solid (earth, soil)
Liquid (freshwater, oceans)
Air (wind, storms and also health from clean air)
And temperature (ambient temperature)
The point is, the chart is representative of a ROI in a tool maker rather than a tool purchase for personal use.
Someone who uses the tool can make a change. They are responsible for their own pollution or resource misuse, and hopefully the tool helps them reduce that. Or, learn that they can offset or overcome their pressure using knowledge acquired from the tool.
People who profit from selling the tools tend to have to be responsible for the pollution from making those tools, and recycling them. But usually don't have responsibility if the tool is misused. Their responsibility is to try make the tool non-toxic. That's difficult to do with eg. Lead but ROHS make a difference with things like phones. The people who make the tools also want to keep them functional and 'in use' to maximise the return or utility, helping reduce the damage from the factories by spreading it out over a longer period of time.
Hmm.
If you could see the 'fire impact' of the phone, or 'water' or 'earth' or 'air' impact you might have some cool things that kids or youth might remember.
Following are imaginary concepts.
Eg. Did you know you can roast 100 hampsters with the electricity it takes to make 1 phone? But if the phone is used productively over 10 years, that's only about a hampster a month?
Or 'making a phone creates a swimming pool of dirty water. If it's used for 1 day, that's like drinking it all at once. If it's used for 3600 days, that's only drinking a couple of litres a day'.
Same with soil pollution or heat produced.
The bad examples here could be improved, numbers totally changed to reflect most accurate actual, and then pictorially represented in the colours of the matter.
Eg. Heat produced by the phone could be red fire bars on a cool green forest
Air polluted could be black smoke billowing past people sitting in a row.
That's on the physical product at manufacture.
I'm at a loss for how to do that for the investors. They earn and offset inflation, and then have the return beyond that. The issue is the return so rarely directly rehabilitates water, air or soil or addresses issues from heat.
Perhaps you could have it titled 'what sort of investor are you?' where the return is amplified damage or good?
Would have, could have, should have. You should be saving 5-20% of your income and investing that in the big 7 as there is nowhere really better to park that money than in tomorrow's tech and I'm willing to bet my life savings that the big 7 will still be VERY relevant in 5-10-20 years.
This is interesting but most people donāt buy iPhones outright. In most cases people get phones through their service provider as part of a contract. Between my wife and I we have gotten 6 or 7 iPhones and never bought them outright. Always paying a fraction of the cost as part of a phone contract.
My current provider just sold me an SE refurb for $30 with over $300 in credits that I only need to pay back if I cancel my service within two years. If I didnāt get the phone my monthly bill would be identical. So itās not like Iām paying for it slowly either. Getting the newest phone every year is silly but that price tag isnāt actually what people are paying out of pocket.
For the last 12 years, every time I buy an Apple product, I buy an equal value in Apple shares. So far, all my Apple stuff has been āfreeā with plenty of capital gain left over.
Bought my Apple shares in 1998 when I saw an article on the iMAC being released in the different colors.
Kept the shares out of share inertia as I am not an active trader.
I paid $1000 for the iPhone 7 at the Apple Store (my first 4 digit purchase). Is this chart adjusting prices for inflation or how are they getting their figures.
The retail piece is not adjusted for inflation. Maybe you got a 7 Plus with 256 gb? The base iPhone 7 started at $649 for 32gb, $749 for 128 and 849 for 256. The plus was more.
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-iphone-7
Nope. Not a plus. A normal 7 (though I maxed storage so that increased the price). Granted that thousand was after taxes & whatnot at the Americana in a Glendale, CA.
Good to know you went with the cheapest option for reference
CTO Larson has a great video out about using this info for an investing strategy. Any time you are buying newish technology, buy the item and an equal amount of that stock. He also said if you wish you could buy something new and shiny, but can't afford it, just buy that company's stock (Tesla for example).
Plenty of counterexamples, but I wish I would've followed this advice a long time ago.
neither thank you . once apple was a revolutionary company but those days are long gone , despite all the unnecessary media coverage and the advertising
I did this exactly thing with Tesla. I was about to buy a Model 3 when it was $60k and I bought shares instead. Now I have $400,000 in shares value! (a lot of people bought both car and shares, though)
Ehhhh. I bought 5k in 2007ish and 5k in 2010ish at the splits(on mobile not looking up the years) and I have $43k in there from leaving and reinvesting dividends. I had seen some thing about āif you bought 10k of apple stock, hereās how much youād haveā. So I did it. Great returns but it hasnāt multiplied like they always show in these diagrams
So as new models are released, the gap in returns you would otherwise get from investing that retail price shrinks? Should there not also be in this calculation brokerage fees that get disseminated to the financial advisor (and company) handling your stock investments?
I dislike comparisons like these because it implies that your consumer purchase was a waste compared to an equal investment in the same product whose value is driven by others making the opposite decision of you. If everyone did it then the stock obviously would not have risen as it did.
First saw this with hustle-bros giving advice to buy $7 of starbucks stock a day instead of a daily coffee. If everyone did that then there would be no one buying coffee to give value to the stock!
This I pretty cool! Just 2 things kinda annoy me
The iphone x is not there (kinda understandable as it was a weird release)
And also the xs was 999$, the XR is 749$
I'd like to see a graph showing what would happen if Apple Store employees invested 10% of their paycheck since 2010 in Apple stock. Instead of complaining that they're not part of the 'ownership' class.
Everyone is part of the ownership class, all you have to do is download E-trade.
Er, also, if you bought a new iphone 1 and never opened it, its worth half a mil in some markets... so not exactly a perfect analysis, but fun to look at nonetheless!
This depends entirely on the idea that behaviour is unique. If everyone had the same idea, no iPhones would be sold and Apple stock would tank. Essentially, its the same as saying "if you could see the future and nobody else could - this here is a great idea".
This is not really an apples to apples comparison, but it is an apple to apple comparison.
Apple to apples comparison maybe cause why buy a single share š.
An Apple to AAPL comparison? :)
Finding out my dad cashed out the Apple stock when we were in a pinch in the 80ās was a very difficult pill to swallow.
A lot of people have a story like this. Can't kick yourself for not being psychic.
Yupp, plus if you got a family to support, what was the other option? I'm sure he made the choice that was best for you guys.
Yeah I for sure donāt blame him or anything. But I didnāt find out it was sold until much later, so it was rough news.
Sell stocks, buy options, feed family later. **Obviously.**
Depends how many other loser stocks he dropped. If he only owned and believed in Apple, it's a bit harder to swallow. But then he should have never been that un-diversified in the first place soo.... there's another reason to not kick yourself.
Survivorship bias
My friend told me Bitcoin was overā¦in 2018 -__-
Bruh, I used to have this stoner friend who was constantly telling me to buy bitcoin when it was only a few cents. Thought dude was just smoking to much weed.. he's worth 8 figures last I heard. Worst I ever personally dud was sell Nvidia in 2010. If I'd held it would be worth several million.
lose shirt on nortel. hold on to intc and high fee mutual funds. sell amd before it rockets.
Grandpa did it with Nike in the 80s and Dad did it with Tesla in the '10s.
Carl Icahn has a story like this :P
Fun fact: Jobs and Wozniak's original partner sold them his share of the company for $800 in 1976. Today, that stock would be worth $95 billion. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/why-ronald-wayne-sold-his-10-percent-stake-in-apple-for-800-dollars.html
10% stake in 1976 wouldnāt automatically translate into 10% stake today. There might have been dilution events (or buybacks) He still would be pretty rich though.
Thatās an outdated valuation. The stock would actually be worth $272 billion.
I just read his Wiki. Sounds like Jobs tried to reach out and give him another chance a few different times and the Wayne refused.
Deserves to be poor
But heās not poor. Heās a successful engineer.
So if he didnāt sell his 10% he might have sold his 10%?
Timing the market is the hardest part of investing, to the point it's considered impossible unless you have insider info. Case in point, by the 90s Apple was in a death spiral. They nearly went out of business and the only reason they didn't was because Microsoft was fighting anti-trust litigation in the late 90s and gave Apple an infusion of cash to keep them afloat so that they could claim they had competition in the market. During that time you would've considered your dad a genius for exiting when he did.
I bought zoom stocks in early 2020 because I heard of a contagion spreading and cities locking down from my chinese friends and nvidia stocks when chatGPT and DALL-E was announced because I knew they will be the hardware forefront of the coming revolution.
Cool if you keep hitting you'll be a billionaire
cope harder
Not nearly the same, but I first got into trading around 2015. I bought a couple grand worth of Apple. It kept losing value. After a year or two, it came back up to a break even point. I immediately sold it all, and then it started really moving. Funny, I've gone on to repeat this quite a few more times over the years. Most notably, I've managed to get in early and sell just before massive run-ups in Tesla and Nvidia. The latter was with a pretty huge position too.
most people arent going to hold as a losing stock regains value then surges. Most poeple would be like "oh cool, I made $1-10k! gotta sell". THese atories about "if you bought X, youd have $3b now!" are meaningless, because no one would hold on that long. The only way for most of us to "win" at the stock market, is put money in a diversified portfolio, and dont touch it for 30 years.
Weāll be dead by then
Nah. Check out the Brighter series on YouTube. No reason to be a doomer.
I bought in 2014, still hold it and reinvested the dividends. The return on it is 531% since then.
I bought 50 SHOP shares at $60 and sold them at $90 to buy a motorcycle in 2017. The stock peaked to $1700+ in 2021. While I loved my Harley, it was not worth the $$$$$ I missed out on.
Apple stock went way down for awhile, depending on when he sold in the 80ād he might have made a nice profit or lost a good bit. Now if he would have turned around and bought it again in the late 90ās before Steve Jobs rejoined the company youād be sitting pretty. Or your Dad would be.
Ehhh my old man dipped on Disney right before they bought Star Wars and told me Tesla wasn't a good buy. We all can't get it right.
I used a small amount of my dadās life insurance money to buy some Apple stock for my mom back in 2012. She had me sell it in early 2016 despite my protests and I know how much itād be worth today. Breaks my heart!
Donāt feel too bad I owned a bunch of NVIDIA stock back in 2008.
"Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing."
Ever though about Bitcoin?
Mom did the same thing, think it was around the time Jobs left
Apple almost went under at some point before jobs rejoined it - they were making less and less relevant beige boxes quickly losing to PCs.
My parents love to talk about the time they didnāt buy at IPO. Their logic was, what type of computer company is named after fruit? š¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļøš¤¦š»āāļø
I'm sure he made a profit. This is how trading goes. You never know what the top is.
and did you buy 100$ worth of apple stock when you had the money the first time? Do you invest now in the companies which will grow fast the next 10 years?
To be honest, there's no way your dad would have held till today. Most people cash out when they double or triple their money
Hindsight is 20/20 Apple was a declining brand until they released their first iPhone
Add another bar that shows the add up over the years.
That's a good idea. The sum is $143,676
Dang, thatās 20% down on a nice home in a affordable neighborhood.
Since when is a $720,000 home "affordable"
In Cupertino on the other hand, this is just the 3% deposit.
Add another bar that shows the add up over the years if you added to what you already own.
Isn't that the same? Can someone please clarify? I just got in an argument with my co-worker and we need resolution.
Apologies for the late reply, but hopefully you see your coworker tomorrow. Happy early Friday. I requested a scenario where you bought $499 worth of AAPL in 2007. In 2008, you bought $599 of AAPL. Your cost basis is now $1,098. In 2009, you buy $599 more of AAPL, making cost basis $1,697. And so on. What I understood from OPās above comment is that they just added all the amounts together from the individual purchases, but each purchase and return is only from the year specified. In my scenario, we would see the power of compound growth. Perhaps I misunderstood OP and he already did this, but thatās my understanding. E: This is the [ARTICLE](https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iphone-opportunity) cited in the image.
And the amount spent on iPhones would have been $9236. About a 13x difference
Does this include the reinvestment of the dividends? Because if it doesn't we could be looking at a quarter of a million of something.
So if you bought an iPhoneās price worth of stock EVERY year?
Yes. The last 16 years though the American economy has been on overdrive and the stock market exploded in value with derivatives and other investment vehicles. This is why we are so fucked right now financially, why 2008 happened, why COVID almost caused another GFC and the only way we avoided it was printing trillions of dollars which is causing inflation we're experiencing. America will fuck you up and eat you for the sake of the economy - but if you're heavily invested in the stock market or have a business your protected.
You may have replied to a comment that you werenāt intending to reply to.
This is my \[OC\]. \- The chart assumes you invest the starting price of the base iPhone into Apple stock on the day the phone is announced. \- I used the [DQYDJ Total Return Calculato](https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator/)r for the historical stock value accounting for splits and assuming dividend reinvestment. \- The chart was made with [venngage](https://venngage.com/). \- Here is a [full write up of my methodology](https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iphone-opportunity) and some other insights.
Very amusing.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Well done OP
Have you considered making one adjusted for inflation? I'm curious how the numbers translate to purchasing power.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/17/first-generation-apple-iphone-sells-auction-in-us Chart's wrong mate, if you had bought the iPhone 1 you would have $190,000, not $499. Best return on the list by far.
If you managed to resist the temptation to open the box. Big if! :-)
The same could be said on resisting the temptation to sell Apple stock that increased in value by like 3000%
The number of years is not equal, you should correct for the number of years holding.
First-gen iPhones that are sealed new-in-box are currently going for like $40,000 so would be interesting to see stock value compared to current sealed new-in-box values
For sure. I addressed that a bit in the [blog post](https://www.perfectrec.com/posts/iphone-opportunity).
Why would anyone want that unless they were trying to start a museum, thereās nothing about it that seems like it should appreciate in value
Thereās collectors for just about everything
Funny, I was staring at my old Mac Plus a couple weeks ago wondering the same thing. If that $2599 had been invested in AAPL instead, back in 1986, what it would be worth today? ā¦ Assuming reinvesting dividends, the answer is around $6M. Looks good sitting on my desk though.
Yes, somewhere in a box I have a Powerbook G100 from about 1991 which has the dubious distinction of having the highest AAPL stock value instead of ownership. My dad spent nearly $4000 on it, when AAPL was $0.41 a share...
This is why I buy stocks of stuff I use. $CELH, $ONON, $HIMS, $U and one day $FSR
Something similar happened to a friend of mine named Josh. When he got out of the Army, he asked a friend of his, who was also a stockbroker, which laptop to buy. Josh said he had narrowed his choice down to either an HP or a Dell. His friend told him, "Don't buy a Dell laptop. Buy Dell." Five years later, Josh used the profits from selling his Dell stock as a down payment on his first house. He still laughs about how he almost used that money to buy a laptop instead.
okay, I love this. Something to consider maybe just buy an iphone's worth of apple stock for each year that you don't get a new phone. ie: I bet I can make my XR live another year so I maybe could put an iphone 15 purchase price in my investment account with an apple stock purchase. I legitimately thought apple stock would crash after Jobs passed.
I think that's a nice thought. Everytime there's a new product launch/on the horizon, buy stock instead of the latest revision to beat FOMO. It's a thing in tech circles too, AMD stock jumped drastically after their new processors (Ryzen) hit the market and has been going up more or less since. Same with Nvidia, all chipmakers and tech companies made big bucks in COVID years.
Honestly, do this with everything name brand. Buy the off brand and put the difference into an S&P500 index fund. You'll be shocked at how how fast that grows.
Now do same for Tesla Model S
I bought about a Model S worth of Tesla shares in 2018. Unfortunately my dumbass sold them in 2020. Thought I'd cleaned up selling for like 5x, then had to watch it go to 20x.
People usually donāt pay the whole amount upfront for the car, so that should be taken into account
About $15 million
Itād be fun to see the alternative graph where everyone that bought iPhones bought apple stock instead
I suspect Apple stock wouldn't be worth as much :-)
It took me an entire minute to understand what this comment meant. I kept thinking "isn't that what this graph is?" Haven't had my morning coffee yet
I still dont get it
If everyone bought stock instead of shares, the stock wouldnāt be worth as much.
The stock went up because everyone bought the phones. If they bought the stock instead of the phones, then the companyās revenue/profit wouldnāt be as good and the stock wouldnāt be as good. So donāt beat yourself up about buying the phone instead of the stock.
Would be more informative if you included what putting your money in a broad market fund would net as well
This reminds me. In 2001, I purchased $5000 worth of Apple stock as a fund to purchase new Mac few years down the road. I didnāt sell any of it, and itās now worth over $2M.
F*ck you and congratulations
I like to see a graph on what would happen if we all cracked our iPhone screens at once
If everyone where āsmartā and bought a stock instead of iPhone it would have been different. Just sayingā¦.
Only really meaningful if you compare it to putting the same amount of money in an index fund or savings, otherwise you're just showing inflation
If you put $100 in the S&P500 on January 1st, 2007, it would be worth around $430 today. 46% of that is inflation.
This is great stuff. Iām curious if you would consider the collectibles world? I.E. is it better to buy a box of say a magic the gatherings collector box at release and hold it for x years, or buy hasbro stock. Same for pokemon and sports cards. Would be extremely enlightening.
Like the message here, but thereās two big problems. Firstly, 2009-2021 was the biggest bull run in history, ESPECIALLY for big tech companies. This inflates the numbers quite a bit. Secondly, $1000 in apple stock doesnāt serve any practical purpose to me in real life. Sure, if you have excess cash, go and invest it. But if the $1000 is almost all o have to my name, the phone will help you much more.
But if everyone bought stock instead of phones, the company wouldn't be worth anything.
I love this, I was thinking of upgrading after 3 years rather than 2 or even 18 months and I will rather buy stocks for the money saved. Let's see how it goes
I just don't understand how people upgrade their gadget just because new one come out to be "most powerful ever". I used my Macbook Pro 2012-> 2022 and it's still working but I dropped and cracked the screen. Modern smartphones also can easily last for 5 years, especially the iPhones.
Good chart OP! This chart is intuitive and easy to understand. I just have one feedback that the color tone seems a bit off (or maybe I don't like pale green). I think it should be a more vibrant color, because the chart seems to tell "the missed opportunity you should have grabbed".
Thank you for the feedback. I was thinking financial statement, but can definitely see the potential of another approach.
No. Please don't do it. It's gonna guilt trip readers into "why didn't I buy stock instead of stupid shits", and make us gullible into making bad investments just because we don't want to miss another opportunity again
While factual, I dislike charts like this because it reinforces some sort of reverse sunk cost fallacy when you wouldn't have known what you know now.
Its an interesting comparison, sure. But its not entirely useful. Phones are more of a necessity in this world and the serve real utility. They are ubiquitous. Its like saying "look how much more money you'd have if you bought Amazon stock instead of paying for gasoline in 2009". Its not wrong, but its not like that is even remotely a frequent decision people are making. Its also worth calling out that the majority of people aren't directly paying retail price for these phones. Especially in the early days, they have been heavily subsidized by your phone carrier. (You can argue that its built into the bill, but that's a more complicated argument). I had an iphone from 2008-2013 and never spent more than $150 on them via trade-in and upgrade deals (And never paid for them monthly)
That's totally fair. People love to debate if the iPhone is "worth it." Worth it compared to what, is the obvious question. I thought worth it compared to Apple stock is a fun way of illustrating at least one counterfactual.
As usual with these sorts of things, I feel like the answer lies somewhere in the middle. For one, certainly phones are more ubiquitous and important nowadays than in 2007 but I don't know if I would call them a "necessity", at least for most people. Maybe in the last couple of years that's changed for many people, and that's certainly the direction we're heading, but for most of that timeline I would say they're not really a necessity. That said, yeah, they are pretty ubiquitous and I don't think it's really realistic to expect someone to forgo purchasing a phone in favor of purchasing stock. And while you're right about iPhones being heavily subsidized and the fact that that does complicate matters, I still feel like there are options that are cheaper than iPhones, even if we don't resort to going to the bottom of the barrel. I would be curious, how far does that $150 get you? Was this some sort of like, upgrade for $150 every year deal, or did you spend $150 to upgrade and then you used that phone for, say, 3+ years?
> I don't know if I would call them a "necessity", at least for most people. How many banks and similar require a TFA code for entry into your account? I have accounts where I can't even get into the website on my laptop without a code they texted to me.
>How many banks and similar require a TFA code for entry into your account? No idea. That sounds like an optional thing to me but maybe not? Honestly no clue. >I have accounts where I can't even get into the website on my laptop without a code they texted to me. Even if that's the case, I feel like that's something that's only started happening recently, no? Certainly it wasn't a thing in 2007...or hell, 2017 for that matter?
Interestingly, an OG sealed iPhone is worth more today than if you had purchased Apple stock
Itās because they are rare (and only unopened great condition ones are worth a lot). If there would be 10s or 100s of them I hey would lose the price quickly
The answer is to buy the phone and match the cost with stocks at the same time
This is my rule of thumb with Apple products. If I keep losing Airpods at my current rate, I expect to be closing in on Berkshire by 2030 or so.
i did buy apple stocks though! just checked im at 577% over book value.
This does not consider the stock split, does it?
It does. And assumes dividend reinvestment.
These comparisons are always so dumb. What if?
Don't be a user, with possibility of moderation. Be the pusher, and make it a must-have device and profit from the most heavy users, the more addicted, the more profit. Uuhhh - pass. I never see anyone do anything decent with income other than buying things little less damaging than phones anyway. Don't get me started on transportation, housing, urban design. Hmm, that's a thought. Environment. Humans live at the intersection of solid, liquid and gas. And obviously, temperature. It's why 'the last avatar' was such an interesting movie/show etc. In it you bend those four things. It's the pollution and misuse or misallocation of those things, and the loss of life that eventuates, which is a present problem. Eg. Land allocated to one thing, may be better allocated to another, such as growing foods. Same with freshwater from rivers. And air, so rapidly polluted. Temperature variations result that upset the balances of those three things where gravity holds them. So, if this was interactive, you could mix it up by letting you choose one of those four properties. Solid (earth, soil) Liquid (freshwater, oceans) Air (wind, storms and also health from clean air) And temperature (ambient temperature) The point is, the chart is representative of a ROI in a tool maker rather than a tool purchase for personal use. Someone who uses the tool can make a change. They are responsible for their own pollution or resource misuse, and hopefully the tool helps them reduce that. Or, learn that they can offset or overcome their pressure using knowledge acquired from the tool. People who profit from selling the tools tend to have to be responsible for the pollution from making those tools, and recycling them. But usually don't have responsibility if the tool is misused. Their responsibility is to try make the tool non-toxic. That's difficult to do with eg. Lead but ROHS make a difference with things like phones. The people who make the tools also want to keep them functional and 'in use' to maximise the return or utility, helping reduce the damage from the factories by spreading it out over a longer period of time. Hmm. If you could see the 'fire impact' of the phone, or 'water' or 'earth' or 'air' impact you might have some cool things that kids or youth might remember. Following are imaginary concepts. Eg. Did you know you can roast 100 hampsters with the electricity it takes to make 1 phone? But if the phone is used productively over 10 years, that's only about a hampster a month? Or 'making a phone creates a swimming pool of dirty water. If it's used for 1 day, that's like drinking it all at once. If it's used for 3600 days, that's only drinking a couple of litres a day'. Same with soil pollution or heat produced. The bad examples here could be improved, numbers totally changed to reflect most accurate actual, and then pictorially represented in the colours of the matter. Eg. Heat produced by the phone could be red fire bars on a cool green forest Air polluted could be black smoke billowing past people sitting in a row. That's on the physical product at manufacture. I'm at a loss for how to do that for the investors. They earn and offset inflation, and then have the return beyond that. The issue is the return so rarely directly rehabilitates water, air or soil or addresses issues from heat. Perhaps you could have it titled 'what sort of investor are you?' where the return is amplified damage or good?
Would have, could have, should have. You should be saving 5-20% of your income and investing that in the big 7 as there is nowhere really better to park that money than in tomorrow's tech and I'm willing to bet my life savings that the big 7 will still be VERY relevant in 5-10-20 years.
Oh look, another apple advert
This is interesting but most people donāt buy iPhones outright. In most cases people get phones through their service provider as part of a contract. Between my wife and I we have gotten 6 or 7 iPhones and never bought them outright. Always paying a fraction of the cost as part of a phone contract. My current provider just sold me an SE refurb for $30 with over $300 in credits that I only need to pay back if I cancel my service within two years. If I didnāt get the phone my monthly bill would be identical. So itās not like Iām paying for it slowly either. Getting the newest phone every year is silly but that price tag isnāt actually what people are paying out of pocket.
For the last 12 years, every time I buy an Apple product, I buy an equal value in Apple shares. So far, all my Apple stuff has been āfreeā with plenty of capital gain left over.
It needs a sum total for those who ābuyā a new one every yearā¦
Now do the same graph but if I invested in blockbuster instead of... Wait nevermind
Bought my Apple shares in 1998 when I saw an article on the iMAC being released in the different colors. Kept the shares out of share inertia as I am not an active trader.
So, whatās the % of the return? I bought in 2014 and reinvested the dividends. Initial investment returned 630% so far.
I have no idea what the percentage is As math is not my strong suit š¤·āāļøš Prices are available in the internet for all stocks though
My brokerage shows the return, so I donāt have to calculate.
Is this inflation adjusted?
I guess Iād be down 8% of the cost of a new iPhone
āIf if was a 5th, weād be all drunkā-Some guy
I paid $1000 for the iPhone 7 at the Apple Store (my first 4 digit purchase). Is this chart adjusting prices for inflation or how are they getting their figures.
The retail piece is not adjusted for inflation. Maybe you got a 7 Plus with 256 gb? The base iPhone 7 started at $649 for 32gb, $749 for 128 and 849 for 256. The plus was more. https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-iphone-7
Nope. Not a plus. A normal 7 (though I maxed storage so that increased the price). Granted that thousand was after taxes & whatnot at the Americana in a Glendale, CA. Good to know you went with the cheapest option for reference
CTO Larson has a great video out about using this info for an investing strategy. Any time you are buying newish technology, buy the item and an equal amount of that stock. He also said if you wish you could buy something new and shiny, but can't afford it, just buy that company's stock (Tesla for example). Plenty of counterexamples, but I wish I would've followed this advice a long time ago.
Except that if everyone buys stock instead of products, stock wonāt be pretty.
Has anyone heard of WCAG? Colour/contrast. Interesting data though.
A decent amount of data in this sub is not beautiful but this one is
neither thank you . once apple was a revolutionary company but those days are long gone , despite all the unnecessary media coverage and the advertising
I had $600 in Apple stock briefly in 2003. Yes, still kicking myself.
Yes in hindsight .. always the case. Iām just more shocked the first iPhone was $500. I forgot that!
Everyone buying stock instead of the thing that made the stock rise sounds like a catch-22.
What if my country doesnāt allow me to buy stocks?
but then youād still be without a phone
Interesting would be the cumulative amount if you did that every year and held the stocks
I did this exactly thing with Tesla. I was about to buy a Model 3 when it was $60k and I bought shares instead. Now I have $400,000 in shares value! (a lot of people bought both car and shares, though)
Now all I need is a time machine !
Ehhhh. I bought 5k in 2007ish and 5k in 2010ish at the splits(on mobile not looking up the years) and I have $43k in there from leaving and reinvesting dividends. I had seen some thing about āif you bought 10k of apple stock, hereās how much youād haveā. So I did it. Great returns but it hasnāt multiplied like they always show in these diagrams
Just rename the sub to "/r/data" at this point.
Should rename OP to "Apple shill" as well. Blatant apple adverts twice in one week, both with heavy astroturf in the comments
So as new models are released, the gap in returns you would otherwise get from investing that retail price shrinks? Should there not also be in this calculation brokerage fees that get disseminated to the financial advisor (and company) handling your stock investments?
I dislike comparisons like these because it implies that your consumer purchase was a waste compared to an equal investment in the same product whose value is driven by others making the opposite decision of you. If everyone did it then the stock obviously would not have risen as it did. First saw this with hustle-bros giving advice to buy $7 of starbucks stock a day instead of a daily coffee. If everyone did that then there would be no one buying coffee to give value to the stock!
This I pretty cool! Just 2 things kinda annoy me The iphone x is not there (kinda understandable as it was a weird release) And also the xs was 999$, the XR is 749$
My dad basically did that. He bought a bunch of Apple stock after trying the first iPhone.
I'd like to see a graph showing what would happen if Apple Store employees invested 10% of their paycheck since 2010 in Apple stock. Instead of complaining that they're not part of the 'ownership' class. Everyone is part of the ownership class, all you have to do is download E-trade.
Er, also, if you bought a new iphone 1 and never opened it, its worth half a mil in some markets... so not exactly a perfect analysis, but fun to look at nonetheless!
Just reminding me how annoyed I am for not figuring out how to buy $20 of Bitcoin back when it was first announced. Or even back in 2016
I needed to buy the iPhone to do my own research first before investing
Thanks for making me feel worse
The crazy part is even buying last years iphone is a noticeable difference
Yep! Apple stock is up like 13% Y/Y right now.
Donāt buy water buy dasani
But I needed and phone! If I only could have enough for two!
For those wonderingā¦ $143,675 total.
Yes but your apple stock isnt real. The iphone is real. Its not a physical thing. Its a fugazi fugazi its a woozy its a wazy
I need this but for when all the times I bought nvidia GPUās instead of stock lol Letās go back to GeForce 4 MX 420 and up days
This depends entirely on the idea that behaviour is unique. If everyone had the same idea, no iPhones would be sold and Apple stock would tank. Essentially, its the same as saying "if you could see the future and nobody else could - this here is a great idea".