What if you bought Bank of America in 1990?
US Finance · Bank. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play10.0× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Bank of America at the start of 1990 would be worth about $10,000 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Bank of America in its modern form came from NationsBank's 1998 takeover of the original San Francisco BankAmerica, keeping the more famous name. Under a string of acquisitive leaders it bought FleetBoston and the card giant MBNA, becoming the country's biggest consumer bank and, by the mid-2000s, a steady and widely held dividend stock.
Then came 2008. In the space of months it agreed to buy the troubled mortgage lender Countrywide and, during the panic of September, Merrill Lynch. Both came with losses far larger than expected, the bank took tens of billions in federal bailout money, and the dividend was cut to a penny. Countrywide in particular generated years of mortgage lawsuits and settlements. By late 2011 the shares traded around five dollars, and Warren Buffett stepped in with a sweetened preferred-stock investment. A slow decade of cleanup followed, and the stock recovered, but by 2026 it still sat at roughly its 2007 level, nearly two decades of patience rewarded mostly with dividends.
The lesson: Acquisitions made at the top of a cycle can haunt shareholders for decades; buying a competitor cheaply in a panic is not the same as buying it well.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $5.00 | $10,000 | $19,429 | 10.0× |
| 1995 | $11.00 | $4,545 | $14,783 | 4.5× |
| 2000 | $24.00 | $2,083 | $4,626 | 2.1× |
| 2003 | $35.00 | $1,429 | $7,727 | 1.4× |
| 2005 | $47.00 | $1,064 | $5,763 | 1.1× |
| 2007 | $53.00 | $943 | $4,789 | 0.9× |
| 2008 | $41.00 | $1,220 | $4,626 | 1.2× |
| 2010 | $15.00 | $3,333 | $6,071 | 3.3× |
| 2012 | $6.00 | $8,333 | $5,312 | 8.3× |
| 2015 | $18.00 | $2,778 | $3,301 | 2.8× |
| 2018 | $30.00 | $1,667 | $2,519 | 1.7× |
| 2020 | $35.00 | $1,429 | $2,092 | 1.4× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $10,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
On this day
- 16 January 2009: Bank of America needs a second rescue
- 25 August 2011: Buffett invests $5 billion in Bank of America
- 14 October 2008: Washington buys stakes in the big banks
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. Bank of America is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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