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I went to grad school with a guy who, the day Apple stock hit $14 a share, decided to spend $500 of his grad student stipend to buy some. He figured Apple's cas

I went to grad school with a guy who, the day Apple stock hit $14 a share, decided to spend $500 of his grad student stipend to buy some. He figured Apple's cash on hand was worth more than $14 a share. I thought he was nuts. I was an idiot.

weavie 8y ago
Does he still own the shares?
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  I haven't asked. But he takes his family on some pretty amazing vacations. He's doing well for himself. And he's still buying Apple products...
paulpauper 8y ago
doesn't mean he held them though
- ben174 8y ago
  This is what I tell everyone when they kick themselves for not buying BTC when it was $0.25. You would have sold them the second they hit $1.00. The only people I know who got rich off BTC are those who found an old wallet on an old drive in their garage.
  - foobaw 8y ago
    Definitely - getting rich off these things means you have to go against convention. People have to call you "crazy" or "wild."
    - privacypoller 8y ago
      Don't get your causation mixed up though. Most of those people are actually crazy, wild and broke.
      - komali2 8y ago
        It never made "sense" to invest in bitcoin, and it still doesn't. If you had done so, you would have made money, but it was a "bad" bet. It wasn't a company, you had no real information to go off of. No earnings reports, no statements, nothing. It was as blind a bet as you can get. If you were technically knowledgeable in the area I guess you could have "predicated" that it would be used to buy drugs and thus go up in value, but to this day we have highly technically competent people saying "this is fucking stupid, this is overvalued, this is useless." It's a religious debate at this point. Throwing .1% of your investment portfolio at it, whatever, why not. I do that with derpy shit stocks all the time (looking at you, HMNY, what a fun ride). But I don't think anybody should be salty about "missing the boat" on Bitcoin or other coins. If you wanna be a millionaire, do drop shipping or something. Stream. Flip houses. There's way less risk averse, proven ways to make extra money. Bitcoin just seems "so easy." Get rich quick.
        RealityVoid 8y ago
        I agree about the saltiness, but not so about BTC being a bad bet, considering it held great promise for a relatively small investment and, I myself, was sold on the way BTC was presented by Satoshi. No matter what happens to BTC now, at least from it's founder's point of view, BTC is a huuuge success.
  - drexlspivey 8y ago
    Relevant tweet: https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang=en https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang... "I wish I had kept my 1,700 BTC @ $0.06 instead of selling them at $0.30, now that they're $8.00!"
  - jrockway 8y ago
    I have a friend who bought low and didn't think about selling until he had about $300,000 worth. Except he stored them on MtGox and they were gone.
  - RealityVoid 8y ago
    Define "rich". I know someone who had an almost 20x ROI with BTC and is still holding it since 2013 I think. That is _VERY_ good ROI, I think. But the invested sum was a paltry $1000 that was a lot for him at the time.
    - ben174 8y ago
      Your sibling posted a good example: https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang=en https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang... Had he held on to his until the very peak, he'd be sitting on $30 million. That's rich. With BTC, 20x isn't that crazy. I'm talking about 50,000x if you dig up an old enough wallet.
- privacypoller 8y ago
  yeah - I sold Amazon @ $120 and was a genius for a short period.
meritt 8y ago
When was that? The stock has split 4 times so a bit hard to calculate his return
- gervase 8y ago
  The earliest point at which AAPL reached $14 (roughly $3.57 in post-split shares) was Nov. 1999. If they'd purchased 36 (500/14) shares, they would now have 1008 shares, worth roughly $200K. So, absolute best case and assuming they held until the all-time high, roughly a 400x return. There would be another ~$30K in dividends, assuming no dividend reinvestment.
Fomite 8y ago
I bought some at about the same time. With splits, my cost basis is less than $1/share, and my % return is well north of 20,000%. Apple stock was the downpayment on my house.
- mikestew 8y ago
  AAPL allowed us a period of cost-free unemployment for six months. This was back in the days when the stock was more go-go than it is even now. Wife and I had a period of about six months between jobs, and we had a lot of AAPL. We lived off the gains (and probably a call contract or two), and by the time we both had jobs again, we had more than we started with. Thanks, Steve!
southphillyman 8y ago
In the early 2000s I spent $1800 on a set of 18in chrome rims for an early 90s Accord, the wheels were almost half the value of the car. I use to do the calculations for if I had spent that money on AAPL instead of something so incredibly wasteful. It's easy to beat yourself up looking back in retrospect at dumb decisions.
- komali2 8y ago
  If I never ate my favorite food during highschool (sushi) I'd probably have an extra 2k in the bank I could have spent on Apple. If I hadn't ever played WoW, I could have had 540 to spend on Amazon. I probably also wouldn't have been as fat growing up. If I had not paid for that dumbfuck YOLO trip to Singapore near the end of college, I'd have 2k to throw at Netflix. Or, actually, BP, this was right during the spill. In other words, Amen man. So now I think today - why do I still go out to eat sushi, instead of tucking it away for another Microsoft buy? Why do I still play Overwatch with my friends here and there instead of spending another hour or two learning something? Why do I still blow assloads of cash on trips once or twice a year? I guess, what the hell else am I gonna do with my time and money? Keep it till I die? I ride a motorcycle, I could die tomorrow. Actually, my family has a history of heart disease, I could die literally right now lol. As long as peeps are putting away enough money to survive a crisis, and following the basics of investment principles re: their retirement, they're doing life "right," in my unprofessional opinion. Sure I didn't buy a lot of stock at 18, but I did have a part time job, which let me go out to eat with my friends and take girls to movies and buy a car to drive us to Ren Fest in (with enough leftover to put together a SICK pirate outfit). I had enough saved to make it easy to buy my books in college. Playing WoW was fun and relaxing, oh well. That YOLO trip to Signapore beat a bit of that cultural close mindedness out of me as I engaged with a bunch of other students from around the world... and it got me a job in Taiwan after college, which was eye opening in ways I never could have imagined. Same with my trips today. I could have done things differently and have more money right now, but if I had more money right now I guess the only difference is my apartment might be slightly nicer (maybe, I love my apartment), my motorcycle would be slightly faster (maybe, the one I have is kinda perfect for my style), and my clothes would be slightly more expensive (maybe, I'd probably just shop at Uniqlo anyway). I honestly can't think of anything really different about my life right now. Maybe when I retire I'll be like "dude you asshole, if you'd bought 30 more Apple stocks we could be on a boat right now." But then again, I might just die before then, so, shrug.
Anechoic 8y ago
Repeating (for the second time) a comment I made here in 2010: "Back in Macworld Boston 1996, I bought one share of Apple stock at $16 and got a framed commemorative stock certificate. It went into a box when I moved later that year and I completely forgot about until I found it a couple of weeks ago. It's worth almost $1,000 now!" In the meanwhile, I sold off some of it, but a good chunk of it went into the downpayment for my house last year.

weavie 8y ago

Does he still own the shares?

GlenTheMachine 8y ago
I haven't asked. But he takes his family on some pretty amazing vacations. He's doing well for himself. And he's still buying Apple products...

paulpauper 8y ago

doesn't mean he held them though

ben174 8y ago
This is what I tell everyone when they kick themselves for not buying BTC when it was $0.25. You would have sold them the second they hit $1.00. The only people I know who got rich off BTC are those who found an old wallet on an old drive in their garage.
- foobaw 8y ago
  Definitely - getting rich off these things means you have to go against convention. People have to call you "crazy" or "wild."
  - privacypoller 8y ago
    Don't get your causation mixed up though. Most of those people are actually crazy, wild and broke.
    - komali2 8y ago
      It never made "sense" to invest in bitcoin, and it still doesn't. If you had done so, you would have made money, but it was a "bad" bet. It wasn't a company, you had no real information to go off of. No earnings reports, no statements, nothing. It was as blind a bet as you can get. If you were technically knowledgeable in the area I guess you could have "predicated" that it would be used to buy drugs and thus go up in value, but to this day we have highly technically competent people saying "this is fucking stupid, this is overvalued, this is useless." It's a religious debate at this point. Throwing .1% of your investment portfolio at it, whatever, why not. I do that with derpy shit stocks all the time (looking at you, HMNY, what a fun ride). But I don't think anybody should be salty about "missing the boat" on Bitcoin or other coins. If you wanna be a millionaire, do drop shipping or something. Stream. Flip houses. There's way less risk averse, proven ways to make extra money. Bitcoin just seems "so easy." Get rich quick.
      - RealityVoid 8y ago
        I agree about the saltiness, but not so about BTC being a bad bet, considering it held great promise for a relatively small investment and, I myself, was sold on the way BTC was presented by Satoshi. No matter what happens to BTC now, at least from it's founder's point of view, BTC is a huuuge success.
- drexlspivey 8y ago
  Relevant tweet: https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang=en https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang... "I wish I had kept my 1,700 BTC @ $0.06 instead of selling them at $0.30, now that they're $8.00!"
- jrockway 8y ago
  I have a friend who bought low and didn't think about selling until he had about $300,000 worth. Except he stored them on MtGox and they were gone.
- RealityVoid 8y ago
  Define "rich". I know someone who had an almost 20x ROI with BTC and is still holding it since 2013 I think. That is _VERY_ good ROI, I think. But the invested sum was a paltry $1000 that was a lot for him at the time.
  - ben174 8y ago
    Your sibling posted a good example: https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang=en https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang... Had he held on to his until the very peak, he'd be sitting on $30 million. That's rich. With BTC, 20x isn't that crazy. I'm talking about 50,000x if you dig up an old enough wallet.
privacypoller 8y ago
yeah - I sold Amazon @ $120 and was a genius for a short period.

meritt 8y ago

When was that? The stock has split 4 times so a bit hard to calculate his return

gervase 8y ago
The earliest point at which AAPL reached $14 (roughly $3.57 in post-split shares) was Nov. 1999. If they'd purchased 36 (500/14) shares, they would now have 1008 shares, worth roughly $200K. So, absolute best case and assuming they held until the all-time high, roughly a 400x return. There would be another ~$30K in dividends, assuming no dividend reinvestment.

Fomite 8y ago

I bought some at about the same time. With splits, my cost basis is less than $1/share, and my % return is well north of 20,000%. Apple stock was the downpayment on my house.

mikestew 8y ago
AAPL allowed us a period of cost-free unemployment for six months. This was back in the days when the stock was more go-go than it is even now. Wife and I had a period of about six months between jobs, and we had a lot of AAPL. We lived off the gains (and probably a call contract or two), and by the time we both had jobs again, we had more than we started with. Thanks, Steve!

southphillyman 8y ago

In the early 2000s I spent $1800 on a set of 18in chrome rims for an early 90s Accord, the wheels were almost half the value of the car. I use to do the calculations for if I had spent that money on AAPL instead of something so incredibly wasteful. It's easy to beat yourself up looking back in retrospect at dumb decisions.

komali2 8y ago
If I never ate my favorite food during highschool (sushi) I'd probably have an extra 2k in the bank I could have spent on Apple. If I hadn't ever played WoW, I could have had 540 to spend on Amazon. I probably also wouldn't have been as fat growing up. If I had not paid for that dumbfuck YOLO trip to Singapore near the end of college, I'd have 2k to throw at Netflix. Or, actually, BP, this was right during the spill. In other words, Amen man. So now I think today - why do I still go out to eat sushi, instead of tucking it away for another Microsoft buy? Why do I still play Overwatch with my friends here and there instead of spending another hour or two learning something? Why do I still blow assloads of cash on trips once or twice a year? I guess, what the hell else am I gonna do with my time and money? Keep it till I die? I ride a motorcycle, I could die tomorrow. Actually, my family has a history of heart disease, I could die literally right now lol. As long as peeps are putting away enough money to survive a crisis, and following the basics of investment principles re: their retirement, they're doing life "right," in my unprofessional opinion. Sure I didn't buy a lot of stock at 18, but I did have a part time job, which let me go out to eat with my friends and take girls to movies and buy a car to drive us to Ren Fest in (with enough leftover to put together a SICK pirate outfit). I had enough saved to make it easy to buy my books in college. Playing WoW was fun and relaxing, oh well. That YOLO trip to Signapore beat a bit of that cultural close mindedness out of me as I engaged with a bunch of other students from around the world... and it got me a job in Taiwan after college, which was eye opening in ways I never could have imagined. Same with my trips today. I could have done things differently and have more money right now, but if I had more money right now I guess the only difference is my apartment might be slightly nicer (maybe, I love my apartment), my motorcycle would be slightly faster (maybe, the one I have is kinda perfect for my style), and my clothes would be slightly more expensive (maybe, I'd probably just shop at Uniqlo anyway). I honestly can't think of anything really different about my life right now. Maybe when I retire I'll be like "dude you asshole, if you'd bought 30 more Apple stocks we could be on a boat right now." But then again, I might just die before then, so, shrug.

Anechoic 8y ago

Repeating (for the second time) a comment I made here in 2010: "Back in Macworld Boston 1996, I bought one share of Apple stock at $16 and got a framed commemorative stock certificate. It went into a box when I moved later that year and I completely forgot about until I found it a couple of weeks ago. It's worth almost $1,000 now!" In the meanwhile, I sold off some of it, but a good chunk of it went into the downpayment for my house last year.