What if you bought Halliburton in 2000?
US Industry · Oil services. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.2× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Halliburton at the start of 2000 would be worth about $1,250 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Halliburton is one of the largest oilfield services firms, best known for hydraulic fracturing and cementing wells, and later for politics. Dick Cheney was its CEO from 1995 to 2000, and Halliburton's acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998 brought with it massive asbestos liabilities. Those claims sent the shares tumbling in 2002, before a settlement in which some subsidiaries went through bankruptcy.
In the 2000s its KBR subsidiary won large contracts supporting US forces in Iraq, drawing intense scrutiny over pricing; Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007. In 2010 Halliburton did cement work on BP's Deepwater Horizon well before the explosion, and later agreed to pay over a billion dollars in settlements. The US shale boom made it a fracking giant, but a planned merger with Baker Hughes collapsed under antitrust opposition in 2016, costing Halliburton a 3.5 billion dollar break-up fee. Oil price crashes in 2014 and 2020 hit hard, and the shares in 2026 sat roughly where they had been in 2000.
The lesson: Legacy liabilities hidden in an acquisition can outlast the deal's benefits; due diligence on what you inherit matters as much as what you buy.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $20.00 | $1,250 | $4,626 | 1.2× |
| 2003 | $9.00 | $2,778 | $7,727 | 2.8× |
| 2005 | $20.00 | $1,250 | $5,763 | 1.2× |
| 2007 | $31.00 | $806 | $4,789 | 0.8× |
| 2008 | $38.00 | $658 | $4,626 | 0.7× |
| 2010 | $30.00 | $833 | $6,071 | 0.8× |
| 2012 | $34.00 | $735 | $5,312 | 0.7× |
| 2015 | $39.00 | $641 | $3,301 | 0.6× |
| 2018 | $49.00 | $510 | $2,519 | 0.5× |
| 2020 | $24.00 | $1,042 | $2,092 | 1.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $2,778. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
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. Halliburton is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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