Apple held a shareholder meeting for investors on Thursday, where CEO Steve Jobs talked about the $40 billion pile of cash that it’s currently sitting on.

With most of the economic news being fairly bleak these days, it’s a refreshing change of pace to see how once-underdog Apple has cruised through the choppy waters of the last couple years with its head held high -- and its wallet fat with cash. In fact, Cupertino is sitting on a mountain of the green stuff: $40 billion to be exact.

At yesterday’s shareholder meeting held at the company’s corporate campus, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told investors that the $40 billion stockpile gives the company “security and flexibility,” but he wasn’t convinced that putting the money into a dividend or share buyback would influence the price of their stock, according to AppleInsider.

Instead, Reuters reports that the CEO reportedly told the investors the company must now “think big” in order to keep the stock price climbing higher. A report from Bloomberg confirmed the announcement that Apple is holding on to its cash for “big, bold risks” -- although there’s no indication what that might mean.

During its first quarter 2010 investor conference call, Apple revealed that it had amassed $39.8 billion in cash by the end of the December quarter -- a mammoth sum for most any company in such a lousy economy.

Among the other tidbits at the meeting: A reporter from Fortune Brainstorm Tech noted that Jobs looked good (referring to his health issues last year), was “feisty” and funny and answered most of the shareholders’ questions. When asked what keeps Jobs awake at night, he quipped: “Shareholder meetings.”