What if you bought American Airlines in 2015?
US Consumer · Airlines. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.2× · S&P 500 same money: $3,301
$1,000 in American Airlines at the start of 2015 would be worth about $222 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
American Airlines Group was formed in 2013 when AMR, American's parent, merged with US Airways while in bankruptcy. Unusually, AMR's old shareholders recovered a stake in the new company, and US Airways' management under Doug Parker took charge. With US airlines consolidated into a handful of giants, profits were strong in the mid-2010s, and the shares started this window near their high.
What American did with those profits became a cautionary tale. It spent heavily on buybacks while also borrowing to renew its fleet, ending up as the most indebted of the big US airlines. When Covid stopped travel in 2020, there was no cushion: the company issued new shares at depressed prices, took federal aid and loans, and piled on more debt. Recovery was weaker than at Delta and United, which captured more of the lucrative premium and corporate traffic, and a 2024 attempt to change how it sold tickets to corporate travel agents backfired. The shares spent the 2020s far below their 2015 level.
The lesson: Buying back shares with borrowed money looks shrewd in good times and reckless in bad ones; balance-sheet strength matters most when you can't raise it.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $54.00 | $222 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $52.00 | $231 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $29.00 | $414 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2020, turning $1,000 into $414. 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. American Airlines is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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