What if you bought Best Buy in 1995?
US Consumer · Retail. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play50.0× · S&P 500 same money: $14,783
$1,000 in Best Buy at the start of 1995 would be worth about $50,000 today — 50.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Best Buy grew from a Minnesota stereo shop into the dominant American electronics chain, riding the boom in DVDs, flat-screen TVs and home computers. From a split-adjusted price of around a dollar and a half in 1995 it multiplied many times over by 2000, and it outlasted its old rival Circuit City, which went bankrupt in 2009.
By 2012 Best Buy looked like the next casualty. Shoppers were using its stores to inspect products before buying them more cheaply on Amazon, a habit dubbed showrooming. Its chief executive left amid a personal-conduct inquiry, the founder floated a buyout that never materialized, and the shares fell below their 2000 level. Then Hubert Joly, a new CEO, matched online prices, turned stores into showrooms that vendors such as Samsung paid for, and used stores as fulfillment centers. The stock recovered strongly through the decade. Since 2020 it has drifted lower as post-pandemic electronics demand cooled, a reminder that turnarounds do not make the cycle go away.
The lesson: Markets often price struggling incumbents as if decline is certain; when a credible fix emerges, the deepest pessimism can mark the best entry point.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $1.50 | $50,000 | $14,783 | 50.0× |
| 2000 | $25.00 | $3,000 | $4,626 | 3.0× |
| 2003 | $24.00 | $3,125 | $7,727 | 3.1× |
| 2005 | $30.00 | $2,500 | $5,763 | 2.5× |
| 2007 | $49.00 | $1,531 | $4,789 | 1.5× |
| 2008 | $53.00 | $1,415 | $4,626 | 1.4× |
| 2010 | $40.00 | $1,875 | $6,071 | 1.9× |
| 2012 | $23.00 | $3,261 | $5,312 | 3.3× |
| 2015 | $39.00 | $1,923 | $3,301 | 1.9× |
| 2018 | $68.00 | $1,103 | $2,519 | 1.1× |
| 2020 | $88.00 | $852 | $2,092 | 0.9× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1995, turning $1,000 into $50,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $14,783.
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. Best Buy is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Consumer
- What if you bought Walmart?
- What if you bought Home Depot?
- What if you bought Costco?
- What if you bought Target?
- What if you bought Starbucks?
- What if you bought McDonald's?