Gene Munster Says Apple Is Going to $1,000

It’s the most intriguing investing question of our time: How high can Apple’s stock go? Answering that query has propelled the career of Gene Munster, a research analyst at Minneapolis brokerage firm Piper Jaffray. For the better part of a decade, Munster, 40, has consistently urged investors to put money into Apple, and he’s been right: The shares have gone from $16.25, when he first recommended them in June 2004, to $628 on April 10. In 2012 alone, the stock is up 56 percent, adding $208 billion to Apple’s market value. At almost $600 billion, Apple is by far the most highly valued company in the world.

Now Munster is upping the ante, calling for Apple to reach $1,000 a share by 2014 and become the first U.S. company worth $1 trillion. (Beijing-based PetroChina crossed that mark for a day in November 2007.) His case rests on both the company’s product prowess and his belief that investors will take money out of other tech stocks and rotate those dollars into Apple. “Investors, especially the big institutions,” he says, “will come to realize that Apple increasingly represents where tech is headed.”