What if you bought Hang Seng in 1990?
Countries · Hong Kong. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play9.3× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Hang Seng at the start of 1990 would be worth about $9,286 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
The Hang Seng tracks the largest companies listed in Hong Kong, a market that over time shifted from local property tycoons and banks such as HSBC to mainland Chinese giants like Tencent, Alibaba and China Mobile. The 1990s were a rollercoaster: a boom ahead of the 1997 handover to China, then the Asian financial crisis, during which the Hong Kong government took the unusual step of buying shares directly in 1998 to fend off speculators attacking the currency peg.
The 2000s rode China's rise, with the index peaking in late 2007 on enthusiasm for mainland listings. After 2008 it recovered, then went through a long sideways stretch and another high in early 2018. What followed was a difficult period: the 2019 protests, the 2020 national security law, a regulatory crackdown on Chinese technology firms in 2021 and the debt crisis at property developers such as Evergrande. By the mid-2020s the index remained below where it had been at the start of 2018.
The lesson: Political and regulatory risk can override strong business fundamentals, and markets tied to one government's priorities deserve a discount for it.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $2,800 | $9,286 | $19,429 | 9.3× |
| 1995 | $8,000 | $3,250 | $14,783 | 3.2× |
| 2000 | $17,000 | $1,529 | $4,626 | 1.5× |
| 2003 | $9,300 | $2,796 | $7,727 | 2.8× |
| 2005 | $14,200 | $1,831 | $5,763 | 1.8× |
| 2007 | $20,000 | $1,300 | $4,789 | 1.3× |
| 2008 | $27,500 | $945 | $4,626 | 0.9× |
| 2010 | $21,800 | $1,193 | $6,071 | 1.2× |
| 2012 | $18,900 | $1,376 | $5,312 | 1.4× |
| 2015 | $23,600 | $1,102 | $3,301 | 1.1× |
| 2018 | $30,000 | $867 | $2,519 | 0.9× |
| 2020 | $28,200 | $922 | $2,092 | 0.9× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $9,286. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
On this 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. Hang Seng is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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