What if you bought AEX in 1990?

Countries · Netherlands. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.

The story

The AEX holds the 25 or so largest companies on Euronext Amsterdam, a small index with an outsized cast: Shell, Unilever, ING, Philips, Heineken and, increasingly, ASML. In the late 1990s it more than tripled, helped by telecom and tech favourites such as KPN and a Philips that still made everything from chips to lightbulbs. The bust took it down by more than half, and in 2003 the Ahold accounting scandal at a US subsidiary sent one of the country's proudest companies into a tailspin.

The financial crisis was particularly Dutch: ABN AMRO was carved up in a 2007 takeover by a consortium that included Fortis, which then needed rescuing itself in 2008, while ING took state aid. For roughly two decades the index stayed below its 2000 peak. Its return to form owed much to ASML, the Veldhoven company whose lithography machines became essential to advanced chipmaking and which grew into the index's heaviest weight, even as Shell and Unilever moved their legal headquarters to London.

The lesson: A small national index can become a concentrated bet on a few companies, so check what you actually own before calling it diversified.

$1,000 invested at the start of each year

green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money

Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $6,786. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.

On this day

• 25 March 1957: The Treaty of Rome creates the common market

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