Apple leads all-time best returns among stocks

New York

THE iPhone helped to catapult Apple into its position as the world's most valuable publicly traded company. But now Apple has another and, arguably, more exalted stock-market distinction. In the history of the markets since 1926, Apple has generated more profit for investors than any other US company.

That conclusion emerges from a study of stock-market returns by Hendrik Bessembinder, a finance professor at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.