What if you bought Newmont in 1990?
US Industry · Gold mining. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play2.8× · S&P 500 same money: $19,429
$1,000 in Newmont at the start of 1990 would be worth about $2,750 today. A plain S&P 500 index fund over the same years would have made more — the boring option won.
The story
Newmont is the world's largest gold miner, which makes its stock a leveraged and occasionally disappointing bet on the price of gold. The 1990s were miserable: central banks were selling bullion, gold drifted lower for most of the decade, and Newmont shares fell with it. In the early 2000s the company bought Normandy Mining and Franco-Nevada, and the long gold bull market that followed should have been a triumph. Yet while gold roughly sextupled into 2011, Newmont shares little more than doubled, as costs for energy, labour and equipment rose almost as fast as revenue.
When gold slumped in 2013, the stock fell even harder, losing roughly two thirds of its value by 2015. Management responded by getting bigger: the 2019 merger with Goldcorp, a Nevada joint venture with rival Barrick, and the 2023 purchase of Australia's Newcrest. The reward finally arrived when gold surged to record highs in 2024 and 2025, lifting Newmont well above its old peaks. Over three and a half decades, though, holders spent long stretches watching the metal outperform the miner.
The lesson: A miner is not the metal: operating costs, acquisitions and dilution can leave shareholders behind even when the commodity itself does exactly what they hoped.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | $40.00 | $2,750 | $19,429 | 2.8× |
| 1995 | $36.00 | $3,056 | $14,783 | 3.1× |
| 2000 | $24.00 | $4,583 | $4,626 | 4.6× |
| 2003 | $29.00 | $3,793 | $7,727 | 3.8× |
| 2005 | $44.00 | $2,500 | $5,763 | 2.5× |
| 2007 | $45.00 | $2,444 | $4,789 | 2.4× |
| 2008 | $49.00 | $2,245 | $4,626 | 2.2× |
| 2010 | $47.00 | $2,340 | $6,071 | 2.3× |
| 2012 | $60.00 | $1,833 | $5,312 | 1.8× |
| 2015 | $19.00 | $5,789 | $3,301 | 5.8× |
| 2018 | $37.00 | $2,973 | $2,519 | 3.0× |
| 2020 | $43.00 | $2,558 | $2,092 | 2.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2015, turning $1,000 into $5,789. The S&P 500 from that same year: $3,301.
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. Newmont is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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