What if you bought Lam Research in 2003?
US Tech · Chips. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play118.2× · S&P 500 same money: $7,727
$1,000 in Lam Research at the start of 2003 would be worth about $118,182 today — 118.2 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Lam Research, founded by David Lam in 1980, specialises in etch and deposition equipment, the tools that carve and layer the intricate structures of modern chips. It is particularly strong in memory, which means it rides the boom-and-bust cycle of DRAM and flash on top of the usual semiconductor cycle. That shows in the price path: a big gain into 2007, then a slump through the financial crisis that left the shares lower in 2012 than they had been five years earlier.
Lam bought rival Novellus in 2012, and an attempted merger with inspection specialist KLA-Tencor was called off in 2016 amid antitrust concerns. As chips moved to three-dimensional designs, such as stacked layers of NAND flash, etching became more important and more difficult, and Lam's share of chipmakers' budgets grew. US export controls on sales to China from 2022 were a headwind, but demand for AI-related chips more than made up for it. From 2012 to 2026 the shares rose more than fifty times.
The lesson: Technical shifts can quietly enlarge a supplier's slice of the pie; Lam benefited as three-dimensional chips made etching a larger share of manufacturing spending.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $1.10 | $118,182 | $7,727 | 118.2× |
| 2005 | $2.90 | $44,828 | $5,763 | 44.8× |
| 2007 | $5.00 | $26,000 | $4,789 | 26.0× |
| 2008 | $4.30 | $30,233 | $4,626 | 30.2× |
| 2010 | $4.00 | $32,500 | $6,071 | 32.5× |
| 2012 | $3.70 | $35,135 | $5,312 | 35.1× |
| 2015 | $8.00 | $16,250 | $3,301 | 16.2× |
| 2018 | $18.50 | $7,027 | $2,519 | 7.0× |
| 2020 | $29.00 | $4,483 | $2,092 | 4.5× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2003, turning $1,000 into $118,182. The S&P 500 from that same year: $7,727.
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. Lam Research is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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