I had a couple hundred shares back in, hmm, mid-80s. I needed the money and sold ‘em. Between the subsequent splits and appreciation, I’d have, uh, I’m going to crawl off and have a good cry. 😊
Only handful stocks have soared while vast majority of cheap stocks do only one thing, remain cheap.
I grew up using Apple computers as the school district I went to was essentially 100% Mac and I have used them ever since. Back in like 96 or so I was given some money by a relative who encouraged me to invest it in stocks and suggested I invest an apple as I was always a fan of them and they believe this Steve Jobs guy would turn the company around. I didn’t. I put it into a CD in the bank.
The last time they made the news for hitting some record high, somehow, that memory popped into my brain so I did some research. Had I invested the $300ish they gave me an apple back then, it would be worth somewhere between like 850 K to close to 2 million today. Ooof.
My father bought me 100 shares of AAPL in 1982. Shortly thereafter I was a kid of 12, and I decided that I could take a modest profit of like $600, which seemed pretty sweet. I asked him to sell. Lessons learned (I too try not cry).
A quarter century later, in Jan 2008, I figured that my shares would then have been worth something in the high five figures. If you can believe it, I thought, “I’m tired of me kicking myself over this. If I invest some of this year’s IRA contribution in AAPL, my bad luck will stop this stupid stock from rising and then I can stop feeling bad about this.” So I made the plunge back in. And for a while my prediction that my purchase would mark the end of AAPL rise IS what happened as the market tanked that year with The Great Recession and the election of Obama. But, then needless to say, my mindset was proven wrong, as the stock came back in a huge way... close today is 52.4X what it was on 1/23/08.