If you're a loyal Apple shareholder, your faith in its stock to keep rocking—despite the iPhone-maker's gigantic size and mature standing—has paid off big time via the phenomenal, 300% liftoff since the onset of the pandemic. But if you ponder buying Apple stock today on hopes it will keep climbing at anything resembling the same pace, forget it. In fact, the bash is most likely over, and the hangover's ahead. Apple now towers as a textbook case of a stock so richly valued that its future returns will likely prove extremely poor.
That may be a hard conclusion to accept, on a July 4 week when business news outlets and Wall Street analysts join voices in saluting Apple's newest coup. On Friday, June 30, Apple shares finished the trading day at a total market cap of over $3 trillion, the first time any U.S. enterprise has ever reached that milestone. The Colossus of Cupertino had hit the "Big 3" mark during intraday trading in January of 2022, only to fall short by the market close, then cratered for the remainder of last year. But in 2023, Apple's stock has rampaged 49%, adding almost exactly $1 trillion in value, equivalent to 40% of the $2.5 trillion that Microsoft's worth today.
