Once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky

Apple Inc. on Thursday became the first U.S. company to surpass $1 trillion in market value, underscoring the iPhone maker’s explosive growth and its role in the technology industry’s ascent to the forefront of the global economy and markets.

Shares of the world’s most valuable public company briefly climbed above $207.04, making it worth $1 trillion overall. The stock has risen more than 21% so far this year, its latest rally coming after it reported strong revenue and profit gains Tuesday as demand for high-price iPhones remained resilient and sales from the app store and other services hit all-time highs.

I’ll probably save the cover of tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal when they run this Apple story on it. I know it’s just a number, but still, it feels symbolic of something big – or perhaps I should say emblematic. This is the most important stock of the secular bull market we’ve been in since 2013. It’s also the one that’s most deserving of having become the largest publicly traded stock in the world.

Apple did it the old fashioned and the new fashioned way – great products, great marketing, incredible innovation, brilliant people, global supply chain, incessant improvements and updates, buybacks and dividends, R&D and M&A, domestic hiring and international outsourcing, wild creativity and diligent bean-counting. They had it all and used it all. It’s an amazing story. Many of us were able to be along for the ride.

It’s also important to remember that Apple is a miracle, unlikely to be repeated ever. This is a company that has had to reinvent itself – twice – in thirty years to claw its way back from obsolescence, having once been described as worth less than the cash on its balance sheet. None of us should expect to see anything like this ever again. This is a once in a lifetime business story, if you’re lucky.