What if you bought ConocoPhillips in 2003?
US Industry · Oil. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play4.2× · S&P 500 same money: $7,727
$1,000 in ConocoPhillips at the start of 2003 would be worth about $4,167 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
ConocoPhillips was formed in 2002 from the merger of Conoco and Phillips Petroleum, creating a large integrated oil company with refineries, pipelines and production. Rising oil prices lifted the shares through the mid-2000s, and in 2006 it paid a hefty price for Burlington Resources, a natural gas producer, close to the peak of gas prices. When prices collapsed in the 2008 crisis, ConocoPhillips took large write-downs on that deal and on its stake in Russia's Lukoil.
In 2012 it split itself in two, spinning off refining and marketing as Phillips 66 and becoming the largest independent oil and gas producer. That made its shares a purer bet on commodity prices, which hurt badly in the 2014-16 oil crash, when it cut its dividend for the first time in decades. The company then reinvented itself around low-cost production and capital discipline, buying Concho Resources in 2021 and Marathon Oil in 2024 to expand in US shale, and committing to return a large share of cash to shareholders.
The lesson: Splitting a company to sharpen focus also concentrates risk; a pure play delivers more upside and more pain when its single driver turns.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $24.00 | $4,167 | $7,727 | 4.2× |
| 2005 | $43.00 | $2,326 | $5,763 | 2.3× |
| 2007 | $72.00 | $1,389 | $4,789 | 1.4× |
| 2008 | $88.00 | $1,136 | $4,626 | 1.1× |
| 2010 | $51.00 | $1,961 | $6,071 | 2.0× |
| 2012 | $73.00 | $1,370 | $5,312 | 1.4× |
| 2015 | $69.00 | $1,449 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $55.00 | $1,818 | $2,519 | 1.8× |
| 2020 | $65.00 | $1,538 | $2,092 | 1.5× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $4,167. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
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. ConocoPhillips is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Industry
- What if you bought Boeing?
- What if you bought Lockheed Martin?
- What if you bought General Electric?
- What if you bought Caterpillar?
- What if you bought John Deere?
- What if you bought UPS?