What if you bought Boeing in 1990?
US Industry · Aerospace. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play13.3× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Boeing at the start of 1990 would be worth about $13,333 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Boeing's arc is a story about culture. After merging with McDonnell Douglas in 1997, the company moved its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001 and became, critics argued, more focused on finance than engineering. For a long time the stock rewarded that shift. Commercial jet demand boomed with Asian airlines and low-cost carriers, and the shares rose to a peak around 2019, helped by heavy buybacks.
Then the 737 MAX crashed twice, in Indonesia in October 2018 and Ethiopia in March 2019, killing 346 people. Investigations found a flight-control system pilots had not been properly told about, and the plane was grounded worldwide for around 20 months. Covid followed, crushing demand for new jets. Boeing had spent heavily on buybacks rather than saving, so it borrowed heavily. In January 2024 a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX in flight, followed by a machinists' strike and a large share sale. A quarter century of growth ended with the stock well below its pre-crash level.
The lesson: In a duopoly, reputation is the moat; when engineering credibility slips, even a structurally protected business can destroy enormous shareholder value.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $15.00 | $13,333 | $19,429 | 13.3× |
| 1995 | $23.00 | $8,696 | $14,783 | 8.7× |
| 2000 | $41.00 | $4,878 | $4,626 | 4.9× |
| 2003 | $33.00 | $6,061 | $7,727 | 6.1× |
| 2005 | $52.00 | $3,846 | $5,763 | 3.8× |
| 2007 | $89.00 | $2,247 | $4,789 | 2.2× |
| 2008 | $88.00 | $2,273 | $4,626 | 2.3× |
| 2010 | $55.00 | $3,636 | $6,071 | 3.6× |
| 2012 | $74.00 | $2,703 | $5,312 | 2.7× |
| 2015 | $130 | $1,538 | $3,301 | 1.5× |
| 2018 | $295 | $678 | $2,519 | 0.7× |
| 2020 | $325 | $615 | $2,092 | 0.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $13,333. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
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. Boeing is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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