Is Apple the one stock you need for retirement?

— -- Q: Shouldn't a person saving for retirement just put all their money on Apple stock?

Investors like to think a stock that made other people rich before, will make them rich, too, in the future. And given the tremendous run in shares of Apple, it may seem like a no-brainer to place a big bet on Apple. And given the past, it's hard to argue otherwise.

Just consider an investor who bought $10,000 of stock at the beginning of 1999. Perhaps this would have been a young investor's early retirement savings. The shares closed at $10.31 on Jan. 4, 1999, meaning the investor could have bought 969.932 shares that day. You can look up historical prices of stocks, like Apple, using USA TODAY.com's free historical price lookup.

Now that Apple shares are trading for roughly $500, those 969.932 shares would be worth $484,966. That's a remarkable 35% average annual compound gain, which blows away just about any mainstream investment you could have made during that time. For most investors, $484,966 would be a stellar amount to have saved for retirement after just putting away $10,000.

So, there's no question, if you could teleport back to 1999 and bet all on your money on Apple, it certainly would have paid off big. Even a retirement plan that was way off schedule could be righted in just 10 years with Apple stock, had you started in 1999.

The trouble is, it's not 1999, it's 2012. Back in 1999, Apple was a tired has-been technology company clawing its way to survival. All the interest was centered around dot-coms, which investors thought had huge growth ahead of them for years. Who would have wanted to invest in a retro maker of high-priced proprietary PCs? Clearly, though, the stock did incredibly well, despite the reasonable reasons to think it wouldn't.

Things have since changed dramatically. Apple is hardly an undiscovered gem. It's the largest company in the world by market value. Any mutual fund manager that hopes to keep pace with the stock market most likely must own the stock. The company's profits are so massive that they have an oversized influence on the bottom line of the entire Standard & Poor's 500. And of the 40 Wall Street analysts who cover the stock, 38 give it either a buy or a strong buy.

Academic research has shown, that over time, value-priced and beaten down stocks do best in the future, on average. Some investors make a case that Apple is a cheap stock. But it's hard to argue that a stock that's up 4,749% since 1999 is beaten down.

Could Apple continue to be that only stock that matters? It's certainly possible. Consumers of Apple products continue to demonstrate that even amid a recession, they have no problem paying the premium the company charges for its products. The company also continues to dominate just about any industry it goes into, ranging from digital music to tablet computers and increasingly smartphones. If consumers continue to ignore competition, it's hard to see anything stopping the power and influence of Apple.

At the same time, just about all hot stocks eventually get challenged. Laws of economics dictate that eventually companies enjoying extremely large profit margins are challenged by competition and replacement products. Perhaps it's truly different this time with Apple. Perhaps Apple's popularity and keen advertising will continue to defy the laws of economics. Just not sure you'd want to bet your retirement on that happening.

Matt Krantz is a financial markets reporter at USA TODAY and author of Investing Online for Dummies and Fundamental Analysis for Dummies. He answers a different reader question every weekday in his Ask Matt column at money.usatoday.com. To submit a question, e-mail Matt at mkrantz@usatoday.com. Follow Matt on Twitter at: twitter.com/mattkrantz