Apple turns 2 trillion

This week Apple hit 2Tr USD in market cap (wow). As you can see, they have joined the ranks of some pretty impressive companies throughout history.

Apple has a beautiful and very profitable business model. Their execution has been flawless as they are in the process of shifting their business from a product company (iphone) to a services ecosystem based on their premium product distribution. You can see some additional highlights in this infographic and in this Stratrchery article.

Apple has also managed to achieve this with low market share numbers in their core businesses, so the monopoly argument is not that strong.

IOS: 25% - Phones: 25% - Computers: 10%

In 2020, the love for Apple stock has gone through the roof, in spite of the global pandemic.

Apple is worth as much as all of the German public companies.

Apple now represents 7,2% of the S&P, the largest single component in 40 yrs. Chart is outdated by a few weeks ;)

The stock is up 10X since Tim Cook became CEO in Aug 2011.

Finally, Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett) started buying Apple in 2016 after pretty much avoiding tech companies his whole career. It has ended up being probably one of the best trades in history: Cost: 35bn+ @ 160 per share // Market Value: 120Bn+ @ 497 per share (estimate)

Still Berkshire Hathaway has 146Bn+ sitting in cash so there is still that.

It has been a bad idea to sell Apple shares for a very long time (I have made that mistake a few times). Maybe that changes in the future, but for now I´m keeping the few I have left.

There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about this milestone in terms of valuation, global economic crisis, China risks, velocity of the move, spillover from government stimulus, retail investors, dependency on the iphone, etc. However, this achievement surely is representative of the excitement in the markets around one of the best run companies in the history of the world.