Imagine you were fortunate enough to have bought 100 shares of Apple stock in 1999. If you had then reinvested any dividends and sold your shares 20 years later, you would have made an annualised return of 27 percent, well above the market average of 6 percent. This is surely a healthy return, but hardly as spectacular as one would expect. In fact, in terms of total shareholder returns (TSR), Apple’s performance ranks 3,175th amongst companies worldwide. Does this mean that Apple’s success hasn’t been as exceptional as is often claimed?
