What if you bought AMC Theatres in 2015?
Hype · Meme stock. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.1× · S&P 500 same money: $3,301
$1,000 in AMC Theatres at the start of 2015 would be worth about $120 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
AMC Entertainment runs one of the world's largest cinema chains. Controlled by China's Wanda Group after 2012 and listed in 2013, it expanded aggressively, buying Carmike in the US and Odeon in Europe in 2016, financed with considerable debt. Shares drifted lower as streaming services changed how people watched films and the debt load grew.
The Covid pandemic closed cinemas in 2020, and AMC appeared headed for bankruptcy. Instead, in 2021, retail investors who called themselves "apes" adopted it as a meme stock, and the share price soared. CEO Adam Aron sold large amounts of new stock to the eager buyers, raising cash that kept the company alive. Later the company created preferred units called APE, then converted them in 2023 along with a 1-for-10 reverse split. Each share now represented a much smaller slice of the company, and the price slid, leaving long-term holders with heavy losses despite the company's survival.
The lesson: Survival financed by issuing shares can save a company while ruining its shareholders, because dilution transfers value from existing owners to new money.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $25.00 | $120 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $15.00 | $200 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $7.00 | $429 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2020, turning $1,000 into $429. The S&P 500 from that same year: $2,092.
On this day
Now try it without hindsight. The wheel decides the year and the asset class, you pick the position, ten seconds a pick, and we simulate to today. AMC Theatres is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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