What if you bought Delta Air Lines (old) in 1990?
US Consumer · Airlines. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
Every dollar is gone. Delta Air Lines (old) went bankrupt in 2005, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
The original Delta Air Lines was for decades considered the best-run US carrier, a Southern airline proud of never laying people off. In the 1990s it prospered from its Atlanta hub and high fares, and its shares held up well through the decade. That made it all the more painful when the 2000s arrived.
The 9/11 attacks crushed air travel, and low-cost rivals like AirTran and JetBlue undercut fares on Delta's best routes. Fuel prices rose sharply from 2004, and Delta carried heavy pension commitments and labour costs. The company lost billions in successive years and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2005, on the same day as Northwest Airlines. In bankruptcy it cut wages, dropped its pilot pension plan onto the federal insurance agency and shed aircraft. When Delta emerged in 2007, the old shares were cancelled. The airline survived; its old shareholders did not.
The lesson: An industry can keep operating while its shareholders are wiped out repeatedly; airlines show that a vital service is not the same as a good investment.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $30.00 | $0 | $19,429 | — |
| 1995 | $50.00 | $0 | $14,783 | — |
| 2000 | $50.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2003 | $12.00 | $0 | $7,727 | — |
| 2005 | $7.50 | $0 | $5,763 | — |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
There was no good entry point: every starting year ends at zero. The same $1,000 in the S&P 500 from 1990 would be $19,429 today.
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. Delta Air Lines (old) is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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