My father's most regretted financial move is ignoring his weird thought to buy 10 shares of Apple stock at this time.
Crystal balls that see the future are certainly in short supply. But if I had one there's a lot better ways to make money than using it to buy 10 shares of Apple 20 years ago.
Yes, but Apple, from 1999 until Jobs died at least, and for some time more, gave people opportunity after opportunity to buy a constantly sky-rocketing stock. If someone didn't see it with the first iMac (1999 IIRC), they should have seen it with the iPod. If not, then with the iPhone. They had many chances to buy that stock.
The point is, right now, any of the hundreds of startups you see just starting now /could/ potentially be the next Facebook. Statistically, most won't be. But of course in 20 years, you won't remember thinking about buying stocks for all the companies that failed. You'll only remember how you once considered buying stock fort his one company that is huge now.
That's the same for every company, so it's a moot point. What would the lesson from that be? Nobody has a crystal ball, so nobody should invest in any stock?
Since investing does happen, and is based on signs and trends, what I'm saying is that Apple gave many of those repeatedly, and if someone didn't see a revived company when the original iMac came out, and then OS X 10.0, and then the iPod, and then the iPhone, and then the iPad, etc, then they only have their selves to blame.
There are masses of information available on companies / stock market. Assuming roulette wheel is fair, there is none other than 1/32 chance known.
Nobody can. Over a 20 year timeline, it’s essentially the same as a roulette wheel.
You seriously can't fathom that knowing financials, track record, ceo, products, pending deals, etc. etc. gives you more information than random chance? How do you make any informed choice about anything at all then?
But 20 years out, the hypothetical "I wish I had bought AAPL in 1996" is just as useless as the "I wish I had bet on green" comparison. In this scenario, it's an apt comparison.
Anyone making an informed choice in 1996, knowing financials, track record, ceo, products, pending deals, etc. etc. would have stayed the hell away from AAPL
The basic idea is the market is efficient (the Efficient Market Theory) and all information about the stock is alreay priced into the stock. Picking a stock to beat the market average is basically a random chance.
Real life markets are very clearly not perfectly efficient. Nor is stock price a perfect reflection of available information. Many/most/all? stock is prices on expectation i.e. guesses, not facts. Then there are all sorts of shenanigans like astroturfing and illegal manipulations/trading.
Wouldn't have taken much to make a lot of money.
Of course, most people, even if that lucky, would have sold early iPod era thinking "This can't continue" and wouldn't have made the profits they would if they held until the last year or two.
You should only have regrets for decisions that would have made sense with the knowledge at that time. Buying Apple stock in the 90s wouldn't. But when I first saw an iphone, my first thought was "Wow, I need to buy one". My second thought then should have been "and I need to buy Apple's stock".
That might have been the world's most expensive iPod.
Worst thing is that my reasoning was solid. Limited stock of a thing people might want = it'll probably go up.
Actually, no. Worst thing is that I sold them for very little, not long after, probably to buy beer. That is an expensive beer.
And how long would he have held on to them before selling?
That's the really fun part of trading: it's one thing to see a profit, and quite another to bet on whether it's as good as you're going to get, or go 5x - 10x - 100x higher.
Did that with Tesla too. And Netflix.
Selling some of it represented a substantial portion of the downpayment on my first house.
The stock has had 3 splits 2:1,2:1,7:1 in that time frame. 10 shares in 1996 would have had a cost of $7.50 and a present market value of ~$32,000.
$32,000 doesn't sound like too bad a return.
The percentage increase in value is astronomical 426500% increase, but "Not buying 10 shares in 1996" is hardly missing out on 'fuck-you' money.
Eyeballing the chart, it would have been right around the last time they paid a dividend until 2012 and the stock price would have been around 1.5. Also, there were three stock splits between then and now.
Oh well, I probably would have lost track of the stock in the many many moves I made during my college years.