Apple products tend to retain their value in the second-hand market but it turns out that buying a brand-new iPhone every year is a worse business strategy than you thought.
One man has worked out just how much money you could have made if you’d invested in Apple stock instead of buying that new iPhone.
And it’s overwhelming.
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It may sound like we’re over-exaggerating but we’re not.
Business news channel CNBC ran a simulation and the result is mind-blowing.
If you had invested the price of a new iPhone every year since 2007, you’d now have enough to buy a supercar.
Buy Apple stock, not iPhones
— Forexblog (@Forexblog_) September 15, 2023
Have you ever thought about how much money would you have if you bought Apple stock instead of a new phone every year?
The figure above shows how much money you would have if you invested in Apple stock only once, for each year of the iPhone's… pic.twitter.com/QR9N5Oqjz1
When the first Apple iPhone dropped in 2007 it cost $499.
Back then, the stock was trading at $2.5, considerably cheaper than the $177 per share it’s trading at today.
If you’d bought $499 worth of Apple stock back then, you’d have around 200 shares worth over $34,000 today.
Apple stock kept trading sideways through the 2000s and the price remained relatively low through the 2010s.
This means you could’ve had a similar result buying Apple stock every year until 2019, instead of buying the iPhone 4, 5, 6, 7 or even the iPhone 8 or X.
And this, bear in mind, doesn’t factor in inflation and dividends.
Even as recently as 2020, Apple stock was still trading way below $100.
This means you would’ve at least doubled your money if you’d bought stock rather than the iPhone 12 just a couple of years ago.
Fast-forward to 2023 and no one knows whether this strategy still makes sense.
Perhaps we should all do what multi-millionaire Rober Croak suggests.
“Every time you want to buy something, you should also invest the same amount in that company,” Croak said.
