What if you bought Novo Nordisk in 2005?
World · Denmark. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play12.0× · S&P 500 same money: $5,763
$1,000 in Novo Nordisk at the start of 2005 would be worth about $12,000 today — 12.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Novo Nordisk, the Danish company controlled by a charitable foundation, has dominated insulin for decades. Its bigger opportunity came from GLP-1 drugs, a class originally developed for diabetes: Victoza in 2010, then semaglutide, sold as Ozempic from 2017 and as the weight-loss drug Wegovy from 2021. Demand exploded, supply could not keep up, and in 2023 Novo became the most valuable company in Europe, larger than Denmark's entire annual economic output.
Then the narrative turned against it. Eli Lilly's rival drug tirzepatide gained share in the US, cheaper compounded copies of semaglutide flooded the market during shortages, and a closely watched trial of its next-generation drug CagriSema disappointed investors in late 2024. The shares fell by more than half from their 2024 peak, the CEO was replaced in 2025, and the company announced thousands of job cuts. A buyer in 2005 multiplied their money many times. A buyer at the start of 2020 ended about where they started, despite holding one of the decade's most successful drugs.
The lesson: Being first to a huge market does not guarantee keeping it, and investors pay for growth expectations that competition can puncture quickly.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $5.00 | $12,000 | $5,763 | 12.0× |
| 2007 | $8.00 | $7,500 | $4,789 | 7.5× |
| 2008 | $9.00 | $6,667 | $4,626 | 6.7× |
| 2010 | $12.00 | $5,000 | $6,071 | 5.0× |
| 2012 | $16.00 | $3,750 | $5,312 | 3.8× |
| 2015 | $42.00 | $1,429 | $3,301 | 1.4× |
| 2018 | $54.00 | $1,111 | $2,519 | 1.1× |
| 2020 | $58.00 | $1,034 | $2,092 | 1.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2005, turning $1,000 into $12,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,763.
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. Novo Nordisk is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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