What if you bought JCPenney in 2000?
US Consumer · Retail. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
Every dollar is gone. JCPenney went bankrupt in 2020, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
JCPenney was the dependable middle of American retail: mall department stores, catalogues and constant sales. Under CEO Mike Ullman the shares rose strongly in the mid-2000s housing-boom spending spree, peaking around 2007, then fell by half in the financial crisis. In 2010 activist investor Bill Ackman bought a large stake and pushed for bold change.
The change was Ron Johnson, the executive behind Apple's retail stores, who became CEO in late 2011. He scrapped most coupons and sales for 'fair and square' everyday pricing, redesigned stores into boutiques and dropped some house brands. Customers trained on discounts simply left; sales fell by about a quarter in 2012, and Johnson was fired in 2013. Ackman sold out at a big loss. The company never regained its footing, burdened with debt as mall traffic declined and online shopping grew. JCPenney filed for bankruptcy in May 2020, early in the pandemic, and its stores were bought by mall owners Simon and Brookfield. Old shareholders got nothing.
The lesson: Star executives from one industry do not automatically succeed in another; a strategy that works for Apple can fail with customers who shop for bargains.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $20.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2003 | $20.00 | $0 | $7,727 | — |
| 2005 | $41.00 | $0 | $5,763 | — |
| 2007 | $80.00 | $0 | $4,789 | — |
| 2008 | $42.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2010 | $27.00 | $0 | $6,071 | — |
| 2012 | $35.00 | $0 | $5,312 | — |
| 2015 | $6.50 | $0 | $3,301 | — |
| 2018 | $3.20 | $0 | $2,519 | — |
| 2020 | $0.9 | $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 2000 would be $4,626 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. JCPenney is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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