The NYTimes quotes The New York Times > Technology > Seeing Google With the Eyes of Forrest Gump: "Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies initial public offerings", on the price of Apple stock over time. If you had bought AAPL at its IPO and held it five years, you would have lost 30%. If you held it to the mid-90s, you'd have merely doubled your money -- while the S&P 500 beat you.