What if you bought Micron in 1995?
US Tech · Chips. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play11.4× · S&P 500 same money: $14,783
$1,000 in Micron at the start of 1995 would be worth about $11,364 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Micron, based in Boise, Idaho, makes memory chips: DRAM for computers and servers and NAND flash for storage. Memory is close to a commodity, and the industry follows a violent rhythm of shortages, over-investment and gluts. That explains the price path: big gains in the 1990s, a collapse after 2000, another slump in the 2008 crisis and the shares lower in 2012 than in 1995. Many smaller rivals did not survive these cycles; Micron bought bankrupt Japanese rival Elpida in 2013.
Consolidation left three serious DRAM makers, Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, and cycles became somewhat less brutal, though still dramatic, as in the 2022 to 2023 downturn. The AI boom then created hunger for high-bandwidth memory, the stacked DRAM placed alongside AI accelerators, and Micron became one of its few suppliers. Its share price climbed sharply in the mid-2020s. A buyer in 1995 earned little for two decades; a buyer in 2012 multiplied their money roughly fortyfold.
The lesson: In cyclical industries the time to buy is usually when results look terrible; Micron's best entry points came when memory gluts made the business look hopeless.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | $22.00 | $11,364 | $14,783 | 11.4× |
| 2000 | $39.00 | $6,410 | $4,626 | 6.4× |
| 2003 | $10.00 | $25,000 | $7,727 | 25.0× |
| 2005 | $12.00 | $20,833 | $5,763 | 20.8× |
| 2007 | $14.00 | $17,857 | $4,789 | 17.9× |
| 2008 | $7.00 | $35,714 | $4,626 | 35.7× |
| 2010 | $10.00 | $25,000 | $6,071 | 25.0× |
| 2012 | $6.30 | $39,683 | $5,312 | 39.7× |
| 2015 | $35.00 | $7,143 | $3,301 | 7.1× |
| 2018 | $41.00 | $6,098 | $2,519 | 6.1× |
| 2020 | $54.00 | $4,630 | $2,092 | 4.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2012, turning $1,000 into $39,683. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,312.
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. Micron is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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