If You'd Put $1,000 Into Apple Stock 20 Years Ago, Here's What You'd Have Today

Apple stock is back at record levels, but then AAPL has been a buy-and-hold winner for the ages.

AAPL stock Apple stock
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Apple (AAPL) stock is back to trading at record levels, but then long-term shareholders should be used to such milestones. After all, they've enjoyed pretty much incomparable returns over the past few decades. 

From January 1990 through December 2020, AAPL stock created $2.67 trillion in shareholder wealth, or an annualized dollar weighted return of 23.5%, according to an analysis by Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. 

Indeed, per Bessembinder's findings, which account for a stock's increase in market value adjusted for cash flows in and out of the business and other adjustments, Apple was the best stock in the world over those 30 years

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True, AAPL stock traded sideways for the first few years of the 21st century, but an explosion of innovation soon put an end to that. Under the visionary leadership of the late Steve Jobs, Apple essentially reinvented itself for the mobile age, launching revolutionary gadgets such as the iPod, MacBook and iPad.

But what really set Apple on its course to becoming the world's second largest publicly traded company – and one of hedge funds' favorite blue chip stocks – was the 2007 debut of the iPhone.

Today, Apple isn't just a purveyor of gadgets; it sells an entire ecosystem of personal consumer electronics and related services. And it's a sticky ecosystem at that.

No less an eminence than Warren Buffett has called the iPhone maker Berkshire Hathaway's (BRK.B) "third business," noting Apple fans' fantastic brand loyalty as one reason for being all-in on the stock. (Apple accounts for more than 40% of the value of the Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.) 

True, Berkshire Hathaway cut its Apple stake in Q1, but that was because the holding company believes that corporate taxes are likely to rise at some point in the future. Bulls needn't worry about Berkshire losing its taste for the stock. Warren Buffett adores Apple as much as ever.

Little wonder the iconic tech firm was tapped to become one of the elite 30 Dow Jones stocks. In 2015, Apple replaced AT&T (T) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average

The bottom line on Apple stock?

Apple stock AAPL stock 20 years

(Image credit: YCharts)

Over the past 20 years Apple stock generated an annualized total return (price change plus dividends) of 35.7%. By comparison, the S&P 500 delivered an annualized total return of 10.5% over the same span. 

What does that look like on a brokerage statement? Check out the above chart and you'll see that if you invested $1,000 in Apple stock 20 years ago, it would today be worth almost $448,000. The same $1,000 invested in the S&P 500 would theoretically have turned into about $7,300 over the same period.

For those wondering if Apple stock is a buy at current levels, Wall Street mostly thinks so. Of the 45 analysts covering AAPL surveyed by S&P Global Market Intelligence, 24 rate it at Strong Buy, seven say Buy, 12 have it at Hold and two say it's a Sell. That works out to a consensus recommendation of Buy, with fairly high conviction.

More Stocks of the Past 20 Years

Dan Burrows
Senior Investing Writer, Kiplinger.com

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the august publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of SmartMoney, MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, InvestorPlace and DailyFinance. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Consumer Reports, Senior Executive and Boston magazine, and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among other publications. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and hosted a weekly video segment on equities.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about equities, fixed income, currencies, commodities, funds, macroeconomics, demographics, real estate, cost of living indexes and more.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade stocks or other securities. Rather, he dollar-cost averages into cheap funds and index funds and holds them forever in tax-advantaged accounts.