What if you bought Facebook / Meta in 2015?
US Tech · Internet. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play9.0× · S&P 500 same money: $3,301
$1,000 in Facebook / Meta at the start of 2015 would be worth about $8,974 today — 9.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Facebook listed in 2012 in a botched IPO and promptly fell by about half as investors worried it had no plan for mobile. It found one quickly: the news feed became the most lucrative advertising space on phones, and the 2012 purchase of Instagram for about a billion dollars, followed by WhatsApp in 2014, looked like some of the best acquisitions ever made. By 2015 the shares had more than doubled from their IPO price.
Then came the reckoning. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 brought hearings, a record FTC fine and a permanent reputational stain. In late 2021 Mark Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta and committed tens of billions a year to a metaverse few people wanted to visit, just as Apple's privacy changes hit ad targeting and TikTok poached attention. In 2022 the stock fell roughly three quarters from its peak. A 'year of efficiency', mass layoffs and a pivot to AI spending restored investor faith with remarkable speed, and the shares went on to new highs.
The lesson: Founder control cuts both ways: Zuckerberg's unchecked authority produced brilliant acquisitions and an expensive metaverse detour, and shareholders could vote on neither.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | $78.00 | $8,974 | $3,301 |
| 2018 | $180 | $3,889 | $2,519 |
| 2020 | $210 | $3,333 | $2,092 |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2015, turning $1,000 into $8,974. The S&P 500 from that same year: $3,301.
On this day
- 3 February 2022: Meta loses a record chunk of value in a day
- 9 April 2012: Facebook buys Instagram for $1 billion
- 10 April 2018: Zuckerberg testifies and Facebook stock rises
- 18 May 2012: Facebook's bumpy IPO
- 26 July 2018: Facebook loses about $119 billion in a day
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. Facebook / Meta is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Tech
- What if you bought Apple?
- What if you bought Microsoft?
- What if you bought Amazon?
- What if you bought Nvidia?
- What if you bought Google / Alphabet?
- What if you bought Netflix?