Apple: Have you Held Since the IPO? If you had bought shares in the IPO of Apple at the IPO price of $22 in 1980 ($2.44 adjusted for corporate actions) and held them through to the present day, you would have achieved a compound annual growth rate close to 17%. $100 invested in 1980 would be worth around $17,000 today. Not including the sparse dividend payouts. But take a look at the first chart below: the top chart is the stock price since 1985. The chart immediately below that represents the peak to valley draw downs Apple has suffered during its tumultuous history. What would it have felt like holding Apple stock when it was suffering an 82% draw down from its equity high? The average of the 5 largest peak to valley percentage draw downs has been a whopping 65%. I wonder how many investors had the guts (or more probably the luck) to hold Apple over the years through good times and bad. Unable to paste all the charts and so forth here.....basically the article says don't buy and hold.....operate a system for better risk adjusted returns...equally, it seems impossible to set out a table simply here.... CAGR Max DD Trades STD Dev Winning Months Risk Adjusted Return Buy and Hold 20.89% 82% 1 46.57 56% 6.09% BBBO 8.86 25.7% 44 13.56 77% 8.86% #aapl
aapl is a one off due to Steve jobs and some luck with the iPod tech companies usually don't recover after losing its core business/products
I could have used any example to demonstrate that it should be possible to use simple systematic trading to achieve a better risk adjusted return than buy and hold. Apple's particular history is not relevant. Tests with 2000 US stocks in a single portfolio tell the same story.