What if you bought Lockheed Martin in 1995?
US Industry · Defence. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play40.0× · S&P 500 same money: $14,783
$1,000 in Lockheed Martin at the start of 1995 would be worth about $40,000 today — 40.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Lockheed Martin was born in 1995 from the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta, part of the post-Cold War consolidation that the Pentagon actively encouraged. The late 1990s were bumpy: a planned merger with Northrop Grumman was blocked on antitrust grounds and operational stumbles hit the share price. In 2001 it won the contract for the Joint Strike Fighter, which became the F-35, the most expensive weapons programme in history.
That contract reshaped the company. Despite years of cost overruns, delays and Congressional criticism, the F-35 was bought by the US military and a long list of allies, giving Lockheed a decades-long stream of production and maintenance revenue. Add missiles, space systems and helicopters from its 2015 purchase of Sikorsky, and the result was one of the most predictable businesses in America, essentially selling to governments under long contracts. Rising defence budgets after Russia's invasion of Ukraine supported demand. Lockheed returned much of its cash through dividends and buybacks, and the shares compounded steadily for a quarter century.
The lesson: A business with a single dominant customer is risky unless that customer is a government committed for decades; contract structure can matter more than growth.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $12.00 | $40,000 | $14,783 | 40.0× |
| 2000 | $22.00 | $21,818 | $4,626 | 21.8× |
| 2003 | $58.00 | $8,276 | $7,727 | 8.3× |
| 2005 | $55.00 | $8,727 | $5,763 | 8.7× |
| 2007 | $92.00 | $5,217 | $4,789 | 5.2× |
| 2008 | $105 | $4,571 | $4,626 | 4.6× |
| 2010 | $75.00 | $6,400 | $6,071 | 6.4× |
| 2012 | $80.00 | $6,000 | $5,312 | 6.0× |
| 2015 | $193 | $2,487 | $3,301 | 2.5× |
| 2018 | $320 | $1,500 | $2,519 | 1.5× |
| 2020 | $390 | $1,231 | $2,092 | 1.2× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 1995, turning $1,000 into $40,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $14,783.
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. Lockheed Martin is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Industry
- What if you bought Boeing?
- What if you bought General Electric?
- What if you bought Caterpillar?
- What if you bought John Deere?
- What if you bought UPS?
- What if you bought Union Pacific?