What if you bought Samsung in 2000?
World · Korea. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play15.0× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Samsung at the start of 2000 would be worth about $15,000 today — 15.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Samsung Electronics is the crown jewel of Korea's largest family-run conglomerate, and the world's biggest maker of memory chips. In 2000 it was a cheap, cyclical manufacturer; by the 2010s its Galaxy phones had overtaken Nokia and it competed head-on with Apple while also supplying Apple with components. Its profits rose and fell with the notoriously cyclical DRAM and NAND memory markets, which explains the flat stretches. The Galaxy Note 7 battery fires of 2016 forced a full recall, and de facto leader Lee Jae-yong was convicted in a bribery case tied to the Park Geun-hye scandal, spending time in prison before a 2022 pardon.
The shares nevertheless ground higher for most of the period, helped by a 50-for-1 split in 2018 that made them accessible to Korean retail investors. The AI boom proved awkward: rival SK Hynix moved first in the high-bandwidth memory used in AI accelerators, and Samsung spent 2024 playing catch-up before regaining ground. Throughout, a governance-related Korea discount kept its valuation lower than global peers'.
The lesson: Being the best operator in a cyclical industry does not exempt you from the cycle; memory-chip gluts and shortages shaped returns more than any single product launch.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $5.00 | $15,000 | $4,626 | 15.0× |
| 2003 | $6.00 | $12,500 | $7,727 | 12.5× |
| 2005 | $9.00 | $8,333 | $5,763 | 8.3× |
| 2007 | $12.00 | $6,250 | $4,789 | 6.2× |
| 2008 | $11.00 | $6,818 | $4,626 | 6.8× |
| 2010 | $15.00 | $5,000 | $6,071 | 5.0× |
| 2012 | $21.00 | $3,571 | $5,312 | 3.6× |
| 2015 | $21.00 | $3,571 | $3,301 | 3.6× |
| 2018 | $43.00 | $1,744 | $2,519 | 1.7× |
| 2020 | $47.00 | $1,596 | $2,092 | 1.6× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2000, turning $1,000 into $15,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $4,626.
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. Samsung is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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