Taking Stock

Thursday, 2 August 2007

Apple’s stock is on a tremendous roll; the company is now in the Fortune 100 and has a market cap of about $120 billion.¹ For comparison, that’s almost four times greater than Yahoo’s, about twice Dell’s, $20 billion more than Oracle’s, roughly the same as [HP’s], and only $40 billion behind Google’s. Even the mighty Microsoft’s cap, at $277 billion, is only a little more than double Apple’s.

To put this in historical perspective, five years ago (approaching the one-year anniversary of the original iPod), at the close of the markets on 2 August 2002, Microsoft’s market cap was about 33 times greater than Apple’s — $210 billion to $6.3 billion.

Needless to say, this is an interesting trend.

I’ve never previously disclosed my personal portfolio, but I probably should have. Here goes:

I do not own a single share of Apple Inc.; nor do I own stock in any other individual company I might write about on Daring Fireball. I do not expect this to change, but I pledge that if it does, I’ll disclose it here.

Good newspapers and magazines prohibit their reporters from owning stock in the companies they write about, and for good reason. I believe this policy is important for what I’m doing here at Daring Fireball, too. Look no further than Engadget’s false report in May that the iPhone was being delayed until November for evidence that what a weblog reports can affect the stock market.

I think it’s worth stating this as policy so that you, my readers, can trust that what I write — as well as what I know about but choose not to write — is based solely on what I deem interesting, important, and true.