What if you bought eBay in 2000?
US Tech · Internet. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play6.7× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in eBay at the start of 2000 would be worth about $6,667 today — 6.7 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
eBay started in 1995 as Pierre Omidyar's AuctionWeb, famous in legend for selling a broken laser pointer, and became one of the few early internet companies that was profitable almost from the start: it simply took a cut while buyers and sellers did the work. Under Meg Whitman it grew rapidly, bought PayPal in 2002, and its shares came through the dot-com crash largely intact, which was unusual.
The next decade was less inspired. eBay paid billions for Skype in 2005, wrote much of that off and sold it in 2009; it lost the general online retail race to Amazon, which offered speed and fixed prices rather than auctions. In 2015 it spun off PayPal, by then the more valuable business, and later sold StubHub and its classified ads arm under pressure from activist investors. What remained was a marketplace focused on used goods, collectibles and enthusiasts, generating steady cash returned through buybacks. Patient holders did fine, but most of the excitement went elsewhere.
The lesson: The spin-off can be the jewel; eBay's PayPal ended up valued above the parent, a reminder that conglomerates can hide their best assets.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $12.00 | $6,667 | $4,626 | 6.7× |
| 2003 | $12.00 | $6,667 | $7,727 | 6.7× |
| 2005 | $25.00 | $3,200 | $5,763 | 3.2× |
| 2007 | $30.00 | $2,667 | $4,789 | 2.7× |
| 2008 | $33.00 | $2,424 | $4,626 | 2.4× |
| 2010 | $24.00 | $3,333 | $6,071 | 3.3× |
| 2012 | $30.00 | $2,667 | $5,312 | 2.7× |
| 2015 | $55.00 | $1,455 | $3,301 | 1.5× |
| 2018 | $38.00 | $2,105 | $2,519 | 2.1× |
| 2020 | $36.00 | $2,222 | $2,092 | 2.2× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $6,667. 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. eBay is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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