9 November 2020: Pfizer's vaccine news sparks a huge rotation
Pfizer and BioNTech announced that their Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 percent effective in trials. Stocks of airlines, cruise lines and cinemas soared, while lockdown winners like Zoom and Peloton tumbled. The Dow briefly jumped over 1,600 points before closing up more than 800. In one morning, investors began repricing the entire post-pandemic world.
The lesson: Markets move on the moment the future changes, not when it actually arrives.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Pfizer at the start of 2020 → $667 today, vs $2,092 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2020, the year it happened. That is a loss of $333, while a plain index fund over the same years made $1,092.
What Pfizer teaches: Owning a dominant, highly profitable company is not enough if you pay a price that already assumes its best decade will repeat indefinitely.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $31.00 | $839 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $36.00 | $722 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $39.00 | $667 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Pfizer? 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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