What if you bought Harley-Davidson in 1990?
US Consumer · Autos. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play20.0× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Harley-Davidson at the start of 1990 would be worth about $20,000 today — 20.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Harley-Davidson nearly died in the early 1980s under AMF's ownership, before managers bought it back, fought Japanese rivals with tariff help and quality improvements, and listed it in 1986. What followed was one of the great consumer runs of the 1990s and early 2000s: baby boomers wanted heavyweight cruisers, waiting lists formed at dealers, and the brand became a lifestyle with merchandise and owner clubs. The share price compounded many times over to a peak in the mid-2000s.
The 2008 crisis exposed a weak spot. Harley's finance arm had lent to riskier buyers, and when defaults rose the company needed expensive funding, including notes sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway at a 15 percent interest rate. The deeper problem was demographic: the core customer was getting older and younger riders were not replacing him. EU retaliatory tariffs in 2018 added trouble, and an electric spinoff, LiveWire, struggled. The shares drifted down for most of the following decade.
The lesson: A brand can be loved and still lose its market if its customers age out; demographics are a slow but relentless force on consumer companies.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $1.50 | $20,000 | $19,429 | 20.0× |
| 1995 | $7.00 | $4,286 | $14,783 | 4.3× |
| 2000 | $32.00 | $938 | $4,626 | 0.9× |
| 2003 | $46.00 | $652 | $7,727 | 0.7× |
| 2005 | $61.00 | $492 | $5,763 | 0.5× |
| 2007 | $70.00 | $429 | $4,789 | 0.4× |
| 2008 | $47.00 | $638 | $4,626 | 0.6× |
| 2010 | $25.00 | $1,200 | $6,071 | 1.2× |
| 2012 | $39.00 | $769 | $5,312 | 0.8× |
| 2015 | $65.00 | $462 | $3,301 | 0.5× |
| 2018 | $51.00 | $588 | $2,519 | 0.6× |
| 2020 | $37.00 | $811 | $2,092 | 0.8× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $20,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
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. Harley-Davidson is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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