What if you bought Cisco in 1990?
US Tech · Networks. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1071.4× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Cisco at the start of 1990 would be worth about $1,071,429 today — 1071.4 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Cisco sold the routers and switches that physically connected the early internet, and in the 1990s that made it one of the fastest-growing large companies in history. Its stock rose several hundredfold across the decade, and in March 2000 it briefly became the most valuable company in the world, priced at well over a hundred times earnings on the assumption that internet traffic, and Cisco's share of it, would grow without limit.
Traffic did keep growing; the valuation did not hold. When telecom carriers and dot-coms stopped spending in 2001, Cisco wrote off billions in inventory and the shares fell by more than three quarters. The company remained solidly profitable, made dozens of acquisitions, moved into software and security (buying Splunk in 2024) and started paying a dividend in 2011. Yet more than a quarter of a century after the peak, the share price had not decisively surpassed it. Buyers in 1990 made a fortune; buyers in 2000 learned what it means to own the right company at the wrong price.
The lesson: Being right about a technology is not the same as being right about a stock; the internet boomed exactly as predicted while Cisco's 2000 buyers waited decades.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $0.07 | $1,071,429 | $19,429 | 1071.4× |
| 1995 | $1.60 | $46,875 | $14,783 | 46.9× |
| 2000 | $53.00 | $1,415 | $4,626 | 1.4× |
| 2003 | $13.00 | $5,769 | $7,727 | 5.8× |
| 2005 | $19.00 | $3,947 | $5,763 | 3.9× |
| 2007 | $27.00 | $2,778 | $4,789 | 2.8× |
| 2008 | $27.00 | $2,778 | $4,626 | 2.8× |
| 2010 | $24.00 | $3,125 | $6,071 | 3.1× |
| 2012 | $18.00 | $4,167 | $5,312 | 4.2× |
| 2015 | $28.00 | $2,679 | $3,301 | 2.7× |
| 2018 | $38.00 | $1,974 | $2,519 | 2.0× |
| 2020 | $48.00 | $1,562 | $2,092 | 1.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $1,071,429. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
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. Cisco is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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