What if you bought Las Vegas Sands in 2005?
US Consumer · Casinos. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play1.2× · S&P 500 same money: $5,763
$1,000 in Las Vegas Sands at the start of 2005 would be worth about $1,170 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Las Vegas Sands was Sheldon Adelson's casino company, built around the Venetian on the Strip and then, crucially, Macau and Singapore. It floated in late 2004, and investors fell in love with the Asian growth story: the Sands Macao opened in 2004 and the giant Venetian Macao in 2007. By early 2008 the shares had more than doubled from the IPO price.
Then leverage met recession. With heavy debt and huge construction projects underway, the stock collapsed in the 2008-09 crisis to a tiny fraction of its peak, and Adelson personally injected money to steady the company. Those who held on were rewarded when Marina Bay Sands opened in Singapore in 2010 and Macau gambling revenues exploded. Covid then shut Macau for long stretches, with China's zero-Covid policy lasting into late 2022. Adelson died in 2021, and the company sold its Las Vegas properties in 2022 to become a purely Asian operator, leaving the shares tied to Chinese policy and Macau's recovery.
The lesson: Leverage turns a cyclical downturn into an existential one; the same debt that magnifies growth can push equity holders to the brink when revenue pauses.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $47.00 | $1,170 | $5,763 | 1.2× |
| 2007 | $90.00 | $611 | $4,789 | 0.6× |
| 2008 | $105 | $524 | $4,626 | 0.5× |
| 2010 | $15.00 | $3,667 | $6,071 | 3.7× |
| 2012 | $43.00 | $1,279 | $5,312 | 1.3× |
| 2015 | $58.00 | $948 | $3,301 | 0.9× |
| 2018 | $70.00 | $786 | $2,519 | 0.8× |
| 2020 | $69.00 | $797 | $2,092 | 0.8× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2010, turning $1,000 into $3,667. The S&P 500 from that same year: $6,071.
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. Las Vegas Sands is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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