Apple Turned $1,000 Into $13,805 in Ten Years, More Than Three Times What the S&P 500 Delivered
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This article examines the current value of a $1,000 investment in Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) over 1, 5, and 10 years. The benchmark is the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY), which tracks the S&P 500.
How Apple Built a Large Services Business Beyond the iPhone
In late 2016, Apple was mostly an iPhone business. Over the next decade, it built a large recurring revenue stream in Services, which includes the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud, Apple Pay, and Apple TV. Services revenue hit an all-time high of $31.57 billion in fiscal Q4 2026. The installed base passed 2.5 billion active devices.
The iPhone stayed at the center, bringing in $57.58 billion that quarter. Fiscal 2026 revenue reached $478.83 billion. That was also John Ternus’s first earnings call as CEO, after he took over from Tim Cook.
Buybacks also reduced the share count over the period. A buyback is when a company spends cash on its own shares, which leaves fewer shares outstanding. Apple bought back $90.711 billion of stock in fiscal 2025. It approved another $100 billion in April 2026 and repurchased $24 billion in the September quarter.
Apple Delivered 3.45 Times the S&P 500 Fund’s Result
1-Year Return (price change)
- Initial Investment: $1,000
- Current Value: $1,306
- Total Return: 30.6%
- S&P 500 (SPY): $1,121.80 (12.18%)
5-Year Return (price change)
- Initial Investment: $1,000
- Current Value: $2,371
- Total Return: 137.1%
- Annualized Return: 18.8%
- S&P 500 (SPY): $1,623.50 (62.35%)
10-Year Return (dividends reinvested)
- Initial Investment: $1,000
- Current Value: $13,805
- Total Return: 1,280.5%
- Annualized Return: 30.0%
- S&P 500 (SPY): $4,002 (300.2%)
The 10-year window starts at the Nov. 30, 2016 close. Apple’s result came to 3.45 times the fund’s. Apple closed at $350.69 on Nov. 9, and SPY closed at $752.69. Apple did a 4-for-1 split in August 2020, so each share turned into four cheaper shares worth the same total. Split-adjusted prices restate older prices on that basis so the comparison holds up.
The dividend made up a smaller part of the return. It’s $0.27 per quarter, a yield of 0.31%, so most of the gain came from the share price. Holders also sat through the 2022 tech selloff and concerns about demand in China.
Bull and Bear Cases at 39 Times Earnings
Apple trades at about 39 times earnings. Bulls are counting on Services to keep growing, Siri AI to add new paid features, and the December quarter to come in near its guidance of 7% to 10% revenue growth.
On the bear side, memory costs are driving December-quarter gross margin guidance down to 45% to 46%. Sales in China have moved between growth and decline in past periods, and a U.S. court ruling on App Store link-outs weighs on Services.
A single company can outperform the index over a decade, and identifying that company in advance is difficult. Index funds spread money across many companies instead of one.
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David Beren has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2022. Writing for 24/7 Wall St. since 2023, David loves to write about topics of all shapes and sizes. As a technology expert, David focuses heavily on consumer electronics brands, automobiles, and general technology. He has previously written for LifeWire, formerly About.com. As a part-time freelance writer, David’s “day job” has been working on and leading social media for multiple Fortune 100 brands. David loves the flexibility of this field and its ability to reach customers exactly where they like to spend their time. Additionally, David previously published his own blog, TmoNews.com, which reached 3 million readers in its first year. In addition to freelance and social media work, David loves to spend time with his family and children and relive the glory days of video game consoles by playing any retro game console he can get his hands on.
