What if you bought McDonald's in 1990?
US Consumer · Food. 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 McDonald's 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
McDonald's is the world's biggest restaurant brand, but in financial terms it is substantially a property company: it owns or leases the land under many restaurants and collects rent and royalties from franchisees. The 1990s were good to the stock. The early 2000s were not: sales stagnated, the menu felt dated, and in 2002 the company reported its first quarterly loss as a public company. The shares fell by more than half from their peak.
The turnaround plan of 2003 shifted focus from opening new restaurants to improving existing ones, adding salads, coffee and the Dollar Menu, and it worked. The 2004 documentary Super Size Me was a public-relations headache but not a financial one. McDonald's thrived during the 2008 recession as diners traded down. Later initiatives included all-day breakfast in 2015, a refranchising push that sold company-operated stores to franchisees, and investment in digital ordering. The stock rose more than tenfold from 2003 to 2020 and kept climbing, with a reliably growing dividend.
The lesson: A mature company can create significant value by fixing its existing operations rather than chasing expansion; same-store improvement beats sheer growth.
$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 | $14.00 | $21,429 | $14,783 | 21.4× |
| 2000 | $40.00 | $7,500 | $4,626 | 7.5× |
| 2003 | $16.00 | $18,750 | $7,727 | 18.8× |
| 2005 | $32.00 | $9,375 | $5,763 | 9.4× |
| 2007 | $44.00 | $6,818 | $4,789 | 6.8× |
| 2008 | $59.00 | $5,085 | $4,626 | 5.1× |
| 2010 | $62.00 | $4,839 | $6,071 | 4.8× |
| 2012 | $100 | $3,000 | $5,312 | 3.0× |
| 2015 | $94.00 | $3,191 | $3,301 | 3.2× |
| 2018 | $172 | $1,744 | $2,519 | 1.7× |
| 2020 | $198 | $1,515 | $2,092 | 1.5× |
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
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. McDonald's is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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