I have come to believe that you’re a smart shopper if the stock price of the company whose products you consistently buy keeps on going up.
Since my move to Apple products, and since the time I bought AAPL stock, it has gone up roughly about 10%. I own a Mac, an iPhone, Airport Extreme and Express, couple iPods, and some Apple software. It is the best operating system I have ever used, and I find Objective C so much better than anything else I have seen, it is amazing. Java and even C# were more than inspired by Objective C.
Similarly, I am a big fan of OS hardware and software virtualization, and most importantly VMWare. The last few months have seen EMC’s stock price skyrocket along with moving towards a spectacular rating by stock analysts.
I use Tide to do my laundry. The PG stock is one of the best performing stocks in NYSE right now.
I think the only stock not doing relatively well (at least in my opinion) for which I am a regular customer is Microsoft. But then, there’s really no competitor to the Xbox 360 right now!