26 launch events, 2001-2025: does a hit or a miss show up in the stock price?
Apple unveils new products at a few keynotes every year, and investors watch them closely. Some of those products became huge businesses (iPod, iPhone, iPad, AirPods) and some flopped or embarrassed the company (Apple Maps, the butterfly keyboard, AirPower, Vision Pro). If the stock market is good at judging products, a hit should push the share price up and a miss should drag it down.
This site tests that idea with 26 Apple events from the first iPod in 2001 to the Siri delay in 2025. Each event is labeled a Hit or a Miss , and for each one I measured how Apple's split-adjusted closing price moved 1 day, 1 week, 30 trading days and 90 trading days later, starting from the close right before the event.
Apple's calendar is predictable: a September event for the new iPhone, WWDC in June for software, and a few smaller events in between. Because rumor sites leak most products weeks ahead, a lot of the "news" is already known before the keynote starts. Wall Street has a saying for this, "buy the rumor, sell the news": the stock rises on expectations and then goes flat once the product is official. Apple also has problems that are not launches at all, like Antennagate or the 2019 revenue warning, so the dataset sorts every event into a Keynote (announcement), a Release (the day a product actually ships) or a Crisis (a public problem).
Average change 30 trading days after a Hit vs. a Miss. The product's reputation does show up in the stock, but slowly.
Events where AAPL jumped more than 2% on keynote day (the 2007 iPhone). On the day itself, the market barely reacts.
Hits vs. Misses after 90 trading days. By one quarter later the difference is gone: a bad launch hurts AAPL for about a month.
| Product / Event | Event date | Verdict | 1 day | 30 days | 90 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone (original) keynote | Jan 9, 2007 | Hit | +8.3% | +4.7% | +28.7% |
| Apple Maps ships in iOS 6 | Sep 19, 2012 | Miss | +0.0% | -17.8% | -35.1% |
| iPhone XR/XS revenue warning | Jan 3, 2019 | Miss | -10.0% | +7.9% | +19.5% |
| Apple Intelligence Siri delay announced | Mar 7, 2025 | Miss | +1.6% | -17.9% | -10.8% |