Warren Buffett says he wished he owned even more Apple stock. Goldman Sachs is launching a new credit card with the tech titan. And in the next few weeks, depending on what happens in the markets, it is possible that Apple may become the world’s first $1tn market cap company. But whether it does or not, Apple is already an exemplar. Study this one company, and you can understand the five most meaningful market trends today.
The first is financial engineering. Like most of the largest and most profitable multinational companies, Apple has loads of cash — $285bn — as well as plenty of debt (close to $122bn). That is because — like nearly every other large, rich company — it has parked most of its spare cash in offshore bond portfolios over the past 10 years.
At the same time it has issued debt at cheap rates to do record amounts of share buybacks and dividend payments since the financial crisis. Apple is responsible for about a quarter of the $407bn in buybacks announced since the Trump tax bill was passed in December.