What if you bought Silicon Valley Bank in 2003?
US Finance · Bank. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $7,727
Every dollar is gone. Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
Silicon Valley Bank, founded in 1983, banked startups and the venture capital firms that funded them, building deep relationships in the tech ecosystem. That niche was rewarding: as venture funding surged, the stock rose steadily through the 2010s and soared during the 2020 and 2021 tech boom, at one point roughly tripling from its pre-pandemic level as deposits flowed in from cash-rich startups.
The bank invested much of that cash in long-term government bonds and mortgage securities at low interest rates. When the Federal Reserve raised rates sharply in 2022, those bonds fell in value, and startups, now struggling to raise money, began withdrawing deposits. In March 2023, SVB announced it had sold bonds at a loss and needed to raise capital. Panic spread rapidly among its concentrated, well-connected depositors, who withdrew tens of billions in a single day. Regulators seized the bank on March 10, 2023, at the time the second-largest bank failure in US history, and later sold it to First Citizens. Shareholders lost everything.
The lesson: Concentration in a customer base means risks are correlated; when all depositors share the same industry and group chats, a bank run can happen at the speed of social media.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | $18.00 | $0 | $7,727 | — |
| 2005 | $45.00 | $0 | $5,763 | — |
| 2007 | $47.00 | $0 | $4,789 | — |
| 2008 | $50.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2010 | $42.00 | $0 | $6,071 | — |
| 2012 | $48.00 | $0 | $5,312 | — |
| 2015 | $116 | $0 | $3,301 | — |
| 2018 | $235 | $0 | $2,519 | — |
| 2020 | $250 | $0 | $2,092 | — |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
There was no good entry point: every starting year ends at zero. The same $1,000 in the S&P 500 from 2003 would be $7,727 today.
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. Silicon Valley Bank is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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