What if you bought Cocoa (ton) in 1990?
Commodities · Soft. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play6.5× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Cocoa (ton) at the start of 1990 would be worth about $6,500 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Cocoa is one of the most geographically concentrated commodities: Ivory Coast and Ghana grow well over half of the world's supply, mostly on small farms with fixed government-set farm-gate prices. That concentration makes the market hostage to West African weather, politics and plant disease. Prices doubled in the early 2000s as civil conflict hit Ivory Coast, rose again around 2010, when a London trader's very large physical purchase earned him the tabloid nickname Chocfinger, and another round of unrest followed Ivory Coast's disputed election.
For most of the 2010s cocoa traded in a broad range. Then, beneath the surface, the trees were aging, the swollen shoot virus was spreading, and low farm-gate prices discouraged replanting. Poor harvests in 2023 and 2024, aggravated by El Nino weather, produced a historic price explosion: cocoa rose above $10,000 a ton in 2024, several times its long-run level, squeezing chocolate makers who raised prices and shrank bars. As demand weakened and supply prospects improved, prices fell sharply in 2025, although they remained high by historical standards.
The lesson: When two countries grow most of the world's supply, a few bad harvests can triple the price, and the resulting demand destruction can halve it again.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $1,000 | $6,500 | $19,429 | 6.5× |
| 1995 | $1,400 | $4,643 | $14,783 | 4.6× |
| 2000 | $850 | $7,647 | $4,626 | 7.6× |
| 2003 | $2,100 | $3,095 | $7,727 | 3.1× |
| 2005 | $1,550 | $4,194 | $5,763 | 4.2× |
| 2007 | $1,650 | $3,939 | $4,789 | 3.9× |
| 2008 | $2,200 | $2,955 | $4,626 | 3.0× |
| 2010 | $3,300 | $1,970 | $6,071 | 2.0× |
| 2012 | $2,100 | $3,095 | $5,312 | 3.1× |
| 2015 | $2,900 | $2,241 | $3,301 | 2.2× |
| 2018 | $1,900 | $3,421 | $2,519 | 3.4× |
| 2020 | $2,500 | $2,600 | $2,092 | 2.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $7,647. The S&P 500 from that same year: $4,626.
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. Cocoa (ton) is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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