First of all …Golf Clap for the REAL ‘big’ Apple.

Apple is the first Company to pass $700 billion. To put that in perspective:

Apple can buy one Yahoo every 3 minutes.

— howardlindzon (@howardlindzon) January 27, 2015

I kid the Yahoo.

Here is a chart of the Apple stock price:

In 2003 you could have bought Apple for $1/share and today that would be worth $123/share. I waited until 2005 and paid $4/share. In 2006, it was hitting All-time highs at $6/share and those that missed it at $1 figured it could not possibly go up any more.

In 2006, Apple was our first Wallstrip show and I wrote myself into the script. It was all about the stores for me. The iPhone was not even launched:

All great stocks need pessimism. If everyone likes someone …for instance…Time Magazine naming Putin Man of The year in 2007…rest assured we will despise them. Further, every bank and analyst on Wall Street was upgrading price targets on 3D printing stocks in 2014, the precise moment they began their 50-70 percent declines.

I am long Apple so I will help it go higher here by calling everything they have achieved to date a fluke. I mean how lucky was Apple that Steve Job’s passed away when he did passing the torch to the ONLY person who could have saved Apple from disappointing iPad sales than Tim Cook.

Apple has always faced pessimism. This old piece from 2001 calling Apple stores a big mistake really stands out.

As a Blackberry fanatic in 2007, I scoffed at Apple getting into the phone business, but held the stock because of the Apple store possibilities.

Once I finally bought an iPhone I have never looked back.

The only thing left for Apple the stock is for it to reach the fabled $1 trillion.

In it’s way are endless CNBC days and hours of blubbering. Time Magazine will surely name Apple the Stock of the Century in a few months.

In the last few years Apple has pulled so far ahead financially that I can’t imagine a company other than Apple that has a chance to reach $1 trillion.

If Apple is to get to $1 trillion we will not lack from armchair quarterbacking strategies offered on the streams, blogs and cable TV. I live on my iPhone 6, marvel at my iPad when I use it and love my Macbook. They are my internet of things. I am sure I will buy a watch or 5 over the first few years whether the media likes it or not.

In the end, it does feel destined because of the era we are in. Zero interest rates in which even Apple has just stuffed their coffers. A global deflationary environment for technology supplies. Plummeting energy prices. Cheap labor. Robots.

I will leave you with this fantastic read from Brad Feld entitled ‘The Death of Distance and The End of Time‘. In 2007 I started Social Leverage which was my dumbed down term to express my investment theme for the end of an era of financial leverage. Brad has a deeper explanation:

I’ve been very open about my belief, which I wrote about for the first time in my book Startup Communities, that the global financial crisis was the point at which networks overtook hierarchies in importance in our society. And, while I’ve read about the history of railroads and the telegraph, I never really thought about them as the starting point for the creation of networks given the death of distance and the end of time.

It’s a powerful construct. Today we are starting to see the self-actualization of networks and the path to what many refer to as the singularity. Regardless of whether you believe this, are comfortable with it (like I am), or are afraid of it (like many others are), it is inevitable that innovation, networks, machines, and AI will continue to evolve at an extremely rapid pace. If you don’t believe me or understand this, go read William Hertling’s amazing Singularity Novels.

Go Apple. And Wheeler…don’t pass the ball.