How much money you’d have today if you invested $1000 in Apple when Macintosh was introduced 40 years ago
Apple changed the face of tech 40 years ago when it brought out the Mac.
Apple might be a company on the very cutting edge of tech, making innovations all the time and designing new products like the Vision Pro that push the envelope even further, but the company's actually been around for a while.
Case in point - the Macintosh computer (now known as just the Mac) recently turned 40, after the first ever Mac came out in late January 1984.
That milestone has got people wondering - given how famously valuable Apple now is, just how smart would you have been to make a decent investment in Apple 40 years ago?
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Well, unsurprisingly it makes for pretty jaw-dropping margins. On 24 January 1984, when the Mac first came out, Apple's stock price was a fractional $0.121652, according to the Nasdaq.
Today it's priced at a much more understandable $193.89 - that's a huge increase of some 159,281%, the sort of yield that brokers dream of.
So, to put it in financial terms, if you had taken $1,000 and invested it in Apple on that day in 1984, and waited exactly 40 years to cash it out, you'd be withdrawing a massive $1,593,809 - immediately making you a millionaire.
There are plenty of valuable stocks out there, but that margin has to be one to make even the most hardened day trader a little jealous.
It isn't like no one knew the Mac would do well, either - it was actually something of an immediate hit, shifting tens of thousands of units in its first few months thanks to its attractive form, despite its pretty high price (starting at about $2,500 - which would be around $7,500 in today's terms).
Since then, of course, it's been the iPhone that has really sent Apple into the stratosphere - helping it become the first company to reach $3 trillion market value.
Now it's branching out into augmented reality, has a streaming service of its own, a hugely successful smartwatch offering and even the persistent rumour that it's working on a major self-driving car project for somewhere down the line.
Still, in amongst all of that you can still pick up a Mac or MacBook, just like you could for the first time 40 years ago - the only thing that's really changed is how it looks and feels to use and, of course, that massive spike in stock price.