What if you bought JPMorgan in 1990?
US Finance · Bank. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play37.5× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in JPMorgan at the start of 1990 would be worth about $37,500 today — 37.5 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
JPMorgan Chase is the product of decades of bank mergers: Chemical Bank absorbed Chase Manhattan, which then combined with J.P. Morgan in 2000, and Bank One followed in 2004, bringing along Jamie Dimon, who became chief executive soon after. The early 2000s were unkind, with dot-com loans and the Enron and WorldCom scandals dragging the shares to roughly half their 2000 level by 2003.
The 2008 crisis made the bank's reputation. Having kept a comparatively tidy balance sheet, JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns with Federal Reserve help in March 2008 and the deposits and branches of the failed Washington Mutual that September. It was not spotless: the 2012 London Whale derivatives loss and years of mortgage-related settlements cost billions. But it emerged as the largest and most profitable US bank, and in 2023 it took over First Republic when that lender failed. Over the full period shown, the stock comfortably beat the market, largely by being the place money ran to whenever other banks wobbled.
The lesson: In a crisis, the strongest balance sheet in an industry does more than survive; it gets to buy weaker rivals' assets at distressed prices.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $8.00 | $37,500 | $19,429 | 37.5× |
| 1995 | $12.00 | $25,000 | $14,783 | 25.0× |
| 2000 | $45.00 | $6,667 | $4,626 | 6.7× |
| 2003 | $24.00 | $12,500 | $7,727 | 12.5× |
| 2005 | $39.00 | $7,692 | $5,763 | 7.7× |
| 2007 | $48.00 | $6,250 | $4,789 | 6.2× |
| 2008 | $43.00 | $6,977 | $4,626 | 7.0× |
| 2010 | $42.00 | $7,143 | $6,071 | 7.1× |
| 2012 | $34.00 | $8,824 | $5,312 | 8.8× |
| 2015 | $62.00 | $4,839 | $3,301 | 4.8× |
| 2018 | $108 | $2,778 | $2,519 | 2.8× |
| 2020 | $140 | $2,143 | $2,092 | 2.1× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1990, turning $1,000 into $37,500. The S&P 500 from that same year: $19,429.
On this day
- 21 July 2010: Dodd-Frank becomes law
- 2 October 2014: JPMorgan admits hackers reached 76 million households
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. JPMorgan is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Finance
- What if you bought Bank of America?
- What if you bought Wells Fargo?
- What if you bought Goldman Sachs?
- What if you bought Morgan Stanley?
- What if you bought Citigroup?
- What if you bought Berkshire Hathaway?