What if you bought Duke Energy in 2000?
US Industry · Utility. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.6× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Duke Energy at the start of 2000 would be worth about $1,600 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Duke Energy is one of the largest US electric utilities, serving the Carolinas, Florida and the Midwest. Around 2000 it was briefly a fashionable energy-trading company too, riding the same wave as Enron; when that bubble burst after 2001, the shares fell sharply. Duke retreated toward regulated electricity, buying Cinergy in 2006 and spinning off its natural gas pipelines as Spectra Energy in 2007, which accounts for much of the drop in the price path around then.
In 2012 Duke merged with Progress Energy, creating the largest US utility, then caused a governance storm by ousting Progress's CEO, who was supposed to run the combined company, hours after the deal closed. In 2014 a pipe under a coal ash pond at a retired North Carolina plant failed, sending ash into the Dan River and leading to federal criminal charges. Beyond the drama, Duke behaved like a utility: slow growth, regulated returns, rising dividends. Its shares mostly moved with interest rates, rising modestly over a quarter century.
The lesson: For income stocks, most of the return comes from dividends rather than price; judging them on share price alone understates what holders actually earned.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $75.00 | $1,600 | $4,626 | 1.6× |
| 2003 | $55.00 | $2,182 | $7,727 | 2.2× |
| 2005 | $75.00 | $1,600 | $5,763 | 1.6× |
| 2007 | $100 | $1,200 | $4,789 | 1.2× |
| 2008 | $60.00 | $2,000 | $4,626 | 2.0× |
| 2010 | $52.00 | $2,308 | $6,071 | 2.3× |
| 2012 | $66.00 | $1,818 | $5,312 | 1.8× |
| 2015 | $84.00 | $1,429 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $84.00 | $1,429 | $2,519 | 1.4× |
| 2020 | $91.00 | $1,319 | $2,092 | 1.3× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2010, turning $1,000 into $2,308. The S&P 500 from that same year: $6,071.
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. Duke Energy is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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