What if you bought Gazprom in 2007?
World · Russia. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $4,789
Every dollar is gone. Gazprom was sanctioned and delisted after 2022, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled gas giant, holds the world's largest natural-gas reserves and for years supplied much of Europe's gas. In 2008 it briefly ranked among the most valuable companies on earth, and its management spoke openly of a trillion-dollar valuation. Instead the shares fell for most of the next decade: the financial crisis, the shale-gas revolution that cut prices, disputes with Ukraine that disrupted transit in 2006 and 2009, and steady investor suspicion that the company served the Kremlin's foreign policy before its shareholders.
After the 2014 annexation of Crimea came sanctions and an expensive pivot east, including the Power of Siberia pipeline to China, which started flowing in 2019. Nord Stream 2 to Germany was finished in 2021 but never certified. After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gazprom's depositary receipts were cut off from Western markets, foreign holders were effectively frozen out, gas flows to Europe collapsed, and the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged that September. Gazprom itself still exists; for foreign investors the position became worthless.
The lesson: Geopolitical risk can make an asset worthless to you even while the company survives; ownership is only as good as the legal system that enforces it.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | $40.00 | $0 | $4,789 | — |
| 2008 | $55.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2010 | $25.00 | $0 | $6,071 | — |
| 2012 | $10.00 | $0 | $5,312 | — |
| 2015 | $4.00 | $0 | $3,301 | — |
| 2018 | $4.50 | $0 | $2,519 | — |
| 2020 | $7.00 | $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 2007 would be $4,789 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. Gazprom is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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