 Hello, I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute, and this is another episode of the Minor Issues podcast. Today I want to look at Apple's, specifically the stock price of the Apple company. It's only one of thousands of stocks in the U.S., and there are many more thousands of stocks around the world. But Apple is the world leader in terms of market capitalization. What the stock market thinks the overall value of a company is at more than $2 trillion, making Apple a larger company than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Berkshire Hathaway, and every other stock. Now of course the Apple is a symbol for a lot of important things in human history. We can go back in the Bible and find the Apple at the center of the story of the discovery of original sin in the Garden of Eden when Adam bites the Apple. Isaac Newton in the Discovery of Gravity occurs when the scientist observes the Apple falling from the tree in 1666. So those are all big things while Apple in isolation is really a cell phone company that would otherwise appear minor and in a very, very competitive industry. But it's not minor in terms of investors and market watchers and analysts who have been following the company very carefully as it's made its way ever higher to its all-time high of $177 a share in late 2021. It of course fell with many of the other tech leaders, but it is approaching a new all-time high. And that's really saying something for a company that prior to and after the tech bubble was selling for less than a dollar a share. But it grew during the housing bubble and it continued to grow during the era of easy fiat money. There was a correction in 2019 down to $57 a share, but seven quarters later, fed by easy COVID-fed money, the stock rose to $177 a share at the end of 2021. It's a tech company. It's a consumer products company, mostly of luxury goods. And it has the greatest brand loyalty of any company ever. As a matter of fact, if there was an encyclopedia entry on brand loyalty, Apple would be prominently mentioned. Warren Buffett, the famous investor and controller of Berkshire Hathaway stock, said that Apple has probably the best business in the world and that it was one of the four giants held in Berkshire Hathaway's portfolio. He described CEO Tim Cook, Auburn graduate, as brilliant. But being a luxury good producer in a tech company, one wonders from the Austrian point of view about the boom bus cycle. Apple was born, it grew, it lived very well during the era of cheap money. But here at the Minor Issues podcast, we're on the lookout for a downturn in sales, new product announcements and introductions, possible layoffs and other things. And in the market, technically speaking, we're looking at a possible double top in Apple price or even new near term low prices in the market. Now this is important for what market watchers call psychological reasons. If everybody's watching Apple and it does poorly, then maybe that spoils their psychology with respect to the market. But in Austrian terms, it's really more informational in that because people are following the stock and are very bullish on the stock. Any negative reports would have information about the overall market condition and the overall stock market. So we're on the alert for new highs, double tops, near term lows and so forth, as well as announcements from the corporation to see what the future direction of Apple is for the purpose of looking at the direction of the overall market.