Reading a Fair-Value Chart
The mountain, the payout band, the normal line, and the gaps
Apple's fiscal 2025 diluted earnings came in at $7.46 a share. Over those same twelve months the stock averaged about $227.
Is that expensive? Neither number can tell you on its own — $227 is only a price, and $7.46 is only a profit.
The question you actually need answered has two halves: what multiple of those earnings does a business growing at Apple's rate deserve, and what multiple have buyers actually been paying? A fair-value chart puts both answers on one pane, against the real price line, for every year in the record. This lesson teaches you to read it — and, just as importantly, to read the places where it deliberately shows you nothing.
Sources: Apple FY2025 Form 10-K (fiscal year ended September 27, 2025, filed October 31, 2025); fiscal-year average of split-adjusted monthly closes. Every element on the chart is the same arithmetic — a per-share number multiplied by a multiple — drawn differently so you can compare them at a glance.
That is the opening. Finishing a lesson is where it stops being interesting and starts being useful: the full lesson runs to 13 sections and ends with 5 practice questions. A free account is what opens the rest, and the other 255 lessons in the Academy with it. No card.
What this lesson covers
- 1One claim, drawn five ways
- 2The multiple, exactly as the chart selects it
- 3Apple, fiscal 2025 — every input behind the brass line
- 4The navy line answers a completely different question
- 5What the market actually paid for a dollar of Apple's earnings
- 6The same company, three ranges, three different normals
- 7Reading the shaded area and the band inside it
- 8Why the last stretch is dashed
- 9Boeing, fiscal 2018 through 2025 — when the chart goes dark on purpose
- 10When earnings are the wrong denominator — the basis toggle
- 11The small print is the most valuable part of the chart
- 12Where to see this on the platform
AND 1 MORE