IF's in life - If I had only invested $100 in that stocks IPO

[packman]

My story - Bought Apple stock back when at around $7 a share, kept it for awhile and happy as shit when it hit $14 then it fell and sold my 10 shares for around $9.


http://digg.com/2019/major-companies-ipo-value-today

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I wonder why it shows the Apple IPO as being in 2002,

when they first went public in 1980. I know it did extremely well for a while, then tanked for about as long, but I'm pretty sure they didn't go back private and then re-launch.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Also, General Electric is shown from 1962.

GE was one of the original DJIA components.

I can attest that GE's curve is not quite as uncomplicated as shown. The shares have dropped precipitously over the last few years. Owners would have been better off selling two or three years ago and walking away.

[packman]

3. That's about when I got into it - late 80's

wife got a promotion and we were flush with cash (ah, those were the days). That was our brief toe-in-the-stockmarket venture.

[csziggy]

4. A friend told me a story about Coca Cola stock owners

Back in the 1980s he was selling vacuum cleaners door to door in rural Gadsden County, Florida. He'd sell to anyone that could make the payments - and that was the gimmick, while the vacuums were more expensive than what you'd buy in the stores, they take low payments for years. Which, of course, made them cost even more with the finance charges.

He'd get to some run down house in the backwoods down a poorly maintained dirt road and the lady of the house would love his fancy vacuums. She'd get her husband to come in to sign the agreement with her and then they would insist that he met them at their bank.

My friend would show up at the back where the couple was met with great respect, ushered into the bank president's office, and the manager would help set up the payments. One of the times, my friend hung around to talk to the bank manager - he'd had this happen about a half dozen times and was confused as to why the couples got such great treatments.

It turned out that in that part of North Florida someone had gone around selling Coca Cola stock in the 1920s to a lot of those dirt farmer's parents. Not knowing any better, the families simply hung onto the stock. By the time my friend met the people who had inherited that stock, they owned a whole lot of value in Coca Cola. Most had sent their kids off to college but they liked where they lived and stuck around. They had not upgraded the way they lived much over how their parents had lived and never spent all that much money, so they had a lot socked away in the local banks.

[LibDemAlways]

6. Shortly after my parents moved from

New Jersey to Southern Calif. in 1961, a friendly neighbor came over to introduce herself. She and my mom hit it off. One day not long after, the neighbor mentioned to my mom that her husband had recently launched a new company and was in the process of taking it public. Perhaps my parents would like to get in on the ground floor. My dad dismissed the idea out of hand. He was convinced it would never fly. And thus, they passed on an opportunity to invest in Computer Sciences Corp., which became a multi million dollar business. My mom never quite forgave dad for that one.

[bif]

7. I've made a lot of money with Apple

That is, when I sell it.