If You Invested in Apple When Warren Buffett Did, Here’s How Much You’d Have

Warren Buffett is one of the most famous investors in the world. As CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, he powered that company’s stock to an incredible 19.8% average annual return from 1965 through 2022, an unbelievable run for nearly half a century.

This means that Buffett and Berkshire beat the S&P 500 — which averaged 9.9% annually, by more than double for about 50 years. This is why investors flock to the handful of stocks that he selects for the Berkshire portfolio.

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One of the most noteworthy in recent years has been Buffett’s investment in Apple (AAPL), which now comprises about 28.12% of Berkshire Hathaway’s stock portfolio. This translates to 300 million shares, valued at $75.13 billion. So it begs the question: If you had played along with Buffett by buying shares and investing when he did, how would your returns have looked?

Buffett made waves in the investment world when Berkshire first bought Apple stock in Q1 2016, and then continued and even accelerated his buying throughout 2016 and into 2017. Buffett had long been known for not investing in technology stocks because, by his own admission, he didn’t really understand them. He famously only invests in what he knows.

Buffett is equally known for buying good companies at a fair price, and Apple certainly fit the bill. While there’s no way to know exactly what his average share price was when he first started buying, if you use the highest closing that quarter as a conservative estimate, it means that you would have paid $27.06 per share for Apple.

As of April 28, 2025, Apple shares closed at $210.14. Here’s what that translates to in terms of dollars and cents based on different starting investment amounts and how many shares that would have yielded:

Investing $100 (about 3.7 shares): $776.57
Investing $500 (about 18.48 shares): $3,882.85
Invested $1,000 (about 36.95 shares): $7,765.71
Invested $10,000 (about 368.55 shares): $77,657.06
Invested $39.2 million, the amount of Buffett’s Q1 2016 purchase (about 1.45 million shares): $304.4 million

Buffett is a legendary stock picker, and that has gone a long way toward his impressive record of lifelong investment success. But you can apply some of his most basic principles to improve your own portfolio.