Filed under: Macworld, Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Apple Financial, Steve Jobs
Tracking the Keynote Index Fund
Matt Haughey has worked up a little analysis/thought experiment of just how much money could be made by buying stocks before every Macworld Keynote of the past ten years-- he calls it the Keynote Index Fund, and has the stock prices before every keynote, directly after every 'note, and a day after every 'note.And the fact is that buying the stock a day before and holding it for 48 hours (until the day after) would have made you money over the past ten years-- he calculates 1.2% growth over 24-hour period, and 2.2% growth over a 48 hour period. Of course, that doesn't hold a candle to what you would have earned if you just kept Apple stock the whole time (holding on to $10,000 of Apple stock since 1997 would have you holding shares worth $525,187 today).
But the fact is that Macworld keynotes can make wily stock traders money. The worst performing keynote so far was in 2005, when only the Mac mini and the shuffle were announced, and the best was last year, when the iPhone was first introduced. So just standard common sense just tells you that if the iUltraportable does appear, you could probably make money with a little day trading*, but if it doesn't show up (and there are no other major announcements), you could take the worst bath so far on the Keynote Index Fund.
*This advice is given by a nonprofessional and should not be listened to under any circumstances or by anyone-- past performance of a stock means nothing to future performance. Plus, I'm still hungover from New Year's Eve, and in no condition to give stock tips anyway.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
mentalsticks said 3:05PM on 1-01-2008
I bought my shares 5 minutes before the iPhone announcement. Had I sold them immediately, I'd have made a couple of percents. But I've kept them, and in less than a year, I've made 140%.
All statistics show that the best way to make money on the stock exchange is to buy (diversified) stock and HOLD ON TO IT.
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Sam said 3:42PM on 1-01-2008
Actually, if you do nothing but buy stocks and hold on to them forever, you are guaranteed to lose 100% of your money. Choosing when to take the money back out is a necessary part of investing.
jason mark said 4:49PM on 1-01-2008
Yay! Love your new background. I haven't tried it on my iPhone yet but the old one was UGLY as all sin, and took about 2 weeks to load if I didn't have great cel reception.
Thanks for updating!
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ben said 7:01PM on 1-01-2008
i was looking at this last night too about the 140% increase in a year, but investing retrospectively is pretty simple. what are the chances it doubles again and gets near 400$, let alone in a year...
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