What if you bought First Republic in 2012?
US Finance · Bank. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $5,312
Every dollar is gone. First Republic was seized in 2023, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
First Republic was founded in San Francisco in 1985 and catered to wealthy clients with personalized service, offering low-rate mortgages and concierge-style banking. It was briefly owned by Merrill Lynch and then Bank of America before returning to the public market in 2010. It was a steady performer, with its stock nearly quadrupling between 2012 and 2020 as it grew deposits and loans among the affluent.
Its business model contained a hidden fragility: it made long-term, fixed-rate jumbo mortgages, and many of its deposits exceeded the insurance limit. When rates rose in 2022, the value of those loans fell, and after Silicon Valley Bank's collapse in March 2023, depositors fled. Eleven large banks deposited thirty billion dollars to stabilize it, an unusual show of support, but the withdrawals continued. On May 1, 2023, regulators seized the bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase. Shareholders lost their investment, and the episode showed how much the banking system relies on confidence.
The lesson: Assets that look safe in a low-rate world can carry large hidden interest-rate risk; locking in long-term fixed rates funded by flighty deposits is a mismatch.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | $32.00 | $0 | $5,312 | — |
| 2015 | $52.00 | $0 | $3,301 | — |
| 2018 | $87.00 | $0 | $2,519 | — |
| 2020 | $118 | $0 | $2,092 | — |
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 2012 would be $5,312 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. First Republic is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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