Wednesday, December 22, 2010

An Apples to Apples Comparison


Click to enlarge.

In the chart above I'm taking Apple's historical stock price adjusted for splits and dividends as reported by Yahoo and I'm dividing by the apple inflation series (the actual cost of the fruit, 1982-84=100) as reported by the BLS.

Apple (stock) was a pretty good apple (fruit) hedge from 1985 to 2005. It then became much more than that.

For what it is worth, I'm not all that interested in hedging the future price of apples (fruit) by buying Apple (stock) at these prices. I suspect that the lowest lying fruit (stock) has already been picked from the Wall Street tree.

I hope this isn't too confusing. I'm basically suggesting that the $300 billion Apple stock is a bit fruity at these prices. That's over $43 for every man, woman, and child on this planet. I'll pass.


Source Data:
Yahoo: Historical Apple Prices
BLS: Historical Apple Prices

3 comments:

  1. I suspect that the lowest lying fruit (stock) has already been picked from the Wall Street tree.

    I agree. I'd add that the fruits of our future labor have already been picked by Wall St.

    Charging people double for a house and twice as much for stocks. Come on.

    The solution: protect purchasing power by investing in something that has quintupled in price like silver - not!

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  2. I agree. I'd add that the fruits of our future labor have already been picked by Wall St.

    Fantastic use of fruit to make your point. Outstanding!

    Charging people double for a house and twice as much for stocks. Come on.

    But investors *desire* their fair share of paradise.

    Forbidden Fruit

    Forbidden fruit is any object of desire whose appeal is a direct result of the knowledge that it cannot or should not be obtained or something that someone may want but is forbidden to have.

    Get you some! ;)

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  3. Just saw an Internet ad from Bank of America.

    They are apparently leveraging every facet of global commodities. There was a picture of a diamond in the ad.

    Splendid. That's just what the global economy needs no doubt. More leverage! Sigh.

    ReplyDelete