19 September 2014: Alibaba stages the biggest IPO ever
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba listed on the New York Stock Exchange at $68 a share and jumped sharply on its first day. Including extra shares sold later, the offering raised about $25 billion, the largest IPO in history at the time. Investors bought into China's booming online shopping. Years later, a Chinese regulatory crackdown showed that political risk was part of the package.
The lesson: When investing abroad, political and regulatory risk are part of the price you pay.
What it meant for investors
$1,000 in Alibaba at the start of 2015 → $1,238 today, vs $3,301 in the S&P 500.
We start the clock at the start of 2015, the first year in our price data after the event. That is 1.2 times the money, but $2,063 less than a plain index fund made over the same years.
What Alibaba teaches: Regulatory risk is not a footnote; when the state decides a sector has grown too powerful, profits matter less than political goodwill.
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $105 | $1,238 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $175 | $743 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $215 | $605 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
What if you bought Alibaba? 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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