Apple Stock Buyback

Happy 2nd day of January 2018. I am still on vacation from work and loving every minute of it. At one point, I made a post about the number of shares Apple has. Here is an updated look -

Date Ended	Year - Quarter	Basic - Shares Outstanding
12/31/2013	FY14 Q1	6,272,504,000
3/31/2014	FY14 Q2	6,123,302,000
6/30/2014	FY14 Q3	6,012,635,000
9/30/2014	FY14 Q4	5,933,845,000
12/31/2014	FY15 Q1	5,843,082,000
3/31/2015	FY15 Q2	5,793,799,000
6/30/2015	FY15 Q3	5,729,886,000
9/30/2015	FY15 Q4	5,646,916,000
12/31/2015	FY16 Q1	5,558,930,000
3/31/2016	FY16 Q2	5,514,381,000
6/30/2016	FY16 Q3	5,443,058,000
9/30/2016	FY16 Q4	5,366,912,000
12/31/2016	FY17Q1	5,298,661,000
3/31/2017	FY17 Q2	5,225,791,000
6/30/2017	FY17 Q3	5,195,088,000
9/30/2017	FY17 Q4	5,149,428,000

As you can see from the table above, Apple's outstanding shares (shares owned by people/companies that aren't Apple) have been going down for a few years now. This means that Apple is buying their own stock. When Apple buys their own stock, that stock pretty much goes away, and the total number of shares available to buy decreases for people/companies that aren't Apple.

As economics 101 taught us, when supply goes down, demand goes up. When the demand goes up, the price goes up. Since Apple is decreasing their stock supply, the demand for their stock will go up (as long as they keep making money), and therefore the price of their stock will go up. 

I personally own Apple stock and after doing my own analysis and research, I am probably going to buy more. Apple is also a product I personally use, and it's a fun stock to follow compared to other stocks I own. 

Looks like the next earnings report will come out on February 1st - http://investor.apple.com/. I will check back to let you know if Apple has continued to buy back their own shares. 

Signed,

Mitch