What if you bought Tencent in 2005?
World · China. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play625.0× · S&P 500 same money: $5,763
$1,000 in Tencent at the start of 2005 would be worth about $625,000 today — 625.0 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Tencent started in 1998 as a copycat instant-messaging service, QQ, and turned it into one of the world's most profitable internet companies. In 2001 the South African media group Naspers bought a large stake for a few tens of millions of dollars, which became one of the most lucrative venture investments ever made. Tencent listed in Hong Kong in 2004, monetised QQ through virtual goods and games, and in 2011 launched WeChat, which evolved into China's everything-app for messaging, payments and services.
Gaming became the profit engine: Tencent took full control of Riot Games (League of Legends), bought into Epic Games and Supercell, and published Honor of Kings, one of the world's highest-grossing titles. Those years produced the steep climb on this chart. Growth stalled after 2018, when regulators froze new game approvals, and again in 2021 when Beijing's tech crackdown brought playtime limits for minors and antitrust scrutiny. Naspers' investment arm Prosus began steadily selling down in 2022. Tencent kept generating large profits and buying back stock, and the price recovered modestly.
The lesson: A single early compounder can outweigh decades of ordinary decisions; Naspers' small Tencent bet shows how returns concentrate in a handful of rare winners.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $0.8 | $625,000 | $5,763 | 625.0× |
| 2007 | $6.00 | $83,333 | $4,789 | 83.3× |
| 2008 | $12.00 | $41,667 | $4,626 | 41.7× |
| 2010 | $30.00 | $16,667 | $6,071 | 16.7× |
| 2012 | $32.00 | $15,625 | $5,312 | 15.6× |
| 2015 | $115 | $4,348 | $3,301 | 4.3× |
| 2018 | $400 | $1,250 | $2,519 | 1.2× |
| 2020 | $380 | $1,316 | $2,092 | 1.3× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2005, turning $1,000 into $625,000. The S&P 500 from that same year: $5,763.
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. Tencent is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in World
- What if you bought ASML?
- What if you bought Shell?
- What if you bought Philips?
- What if you bought Unilever?
- What if you bought Ahold?
- What if you bought KPN?