What if you bought ING in 2000?
World · Netherlands. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0.4× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in ING at the start of 2000 would be worth about $382 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
ING was formed in 1991 when Dutch insurer Nationale-Nederlanden merged with the bank NMB Postbank, creating a bancassurance giant. In the late 1990s it bought the collapsed British bank Barings for a nominal pound, and its online savings arm, ING Direct, became a pioneer of internet banking. The shares peaked in the 2000 bubble and fell sharply afterwards, before recovering in the mid-2000s credit boom.
Then came 2008. ING held exposure to US mortgage-backed securities and needed a capital injection of around ten billion euros from the Dutch state, plus a government guarantee on a large portfolio of mortgage-linked assets. As a condition of the bailout, European regulators forced it to split off its insurance business, later listed as NN Group in Europe and Voya in the US. The shares fell around 80 percent. In 2018 ING paid a large settlement over failings in anti-money-laundering controls. A simpler, profitable bank re-emerged, but buyers from 2000 remain far behind.
The lesson: Bank shares can fall far more than their earnings suggest when hidden balance-sheet risks emerge, and bailouts protect depositors rather than shareholders.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $55.00 | $382 | $4,626 | 0.4× |
| 2003 | $16.00 | $1,312 | $7,727 | 1.3× |
| 2005 | $22.00 | $955 | $5,763 | 1.0× |
| 2007 | $34.00 | $618 | $4,789 | 0.6× |
| 2008 | $27.00 | $778 | $4,626 | 0.8× |
| 2010 | $7.00 | $3,000 | $6,071 | 3.0× |
| 2012 | $5.50 | $3,818 | $5,312 | 3.8× |
| 2015 | $11.00 | $1,909 | $3,301 | 1.9× |
| 2018 | $15.00 | $1,400 | $2,519 | 1.4× |
| 2020 | $10.70 | $1,963 | $2,092 | 2.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2012, turning $1,000 into $3,818. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,312.
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. ING is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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