18 April 2019: Zoom goes public and pops 72%
Zoom Video began trading on April 18, 2019, priced at $36. It closed up about 72%, unusual for a company that was actually profitable. Most investors saw it as a solid niche business-software stock. Less than a year later a pandemic made Zoom a verb, and the shares rose many times over before giving back much of the gain once offices reopened.
The lesson: Nobody forecasts the shock that makes a stock; the hard part is knowing when the boom is priced in.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Zoom at the start of 2020 → $1,176 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 1.2 times the money, but $916 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Zoom teaches: Price can overshoot even when the business delivers; Zoom's results during the pandemic were excellent, but its valuation assumed a peak that could not persist.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $68.00 | $1,176 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Zoom? Every starting year and the full story →
Could you have called it at the time? The wheel picks the year, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick.
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