What if you bought Vertex in 2000?
US Health · Biotech. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play12.9× · S&P 500 same money: $4,626
$1,000 in Vertex at the start of 2000 would be worth about $12,857 today — 12.9 times your money, and ahead of the S&P 500 over the same stretch.
The story
Vertex was a cash-burning research biotech for much of the 2000s, and its shares swung wildly as trial results came and went. Its first big commercial hit, the hepatitis C drug Incivek in 2011, became largely obsolete within a few years once Gilead's better hepatitis C cures arrived. The stock went sideways for most of that period.
The bet that mattered was on cystic fibrosis, a rare genetic disease, partly funded early on by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Kalydeco, approved in 2012, treated the root cause for a small group of patients; Orkambi followed, and in 2019 the triple combination Trikafta extended treatment to the large majority of people with the disease. That gave Vertex a near-monopoly in a market with high prices and few rivals, and the stock climbed steadily as profits arrived. It later used the cash to diversify, winning approval for the CRISPR-based sickle-cell therapy Casgevy in 2023 and a non-opioid painkiller in 2025. Few investors in 2005 would have guessed that a narrow rare-disease franchise would build one of biotech's most dependable businesses.
The lesson: A small but dominant franchise with no real competition can be worth more than a large market crowded with rivals, as niche monopolies often compound quietly.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2000 | $35.00 | $12,857 | $4,626 | 12.9× |
| 2003 | $16.00 | $28,125 | $7,727 | 28.1× |
| 2005 | $11.00 | $40,909 | $5,763 | 40.9× |
| 2007 | $38.00 | $11,842 | $4,789 | 11.8× |
| 2008 | $23.00 | $19,565 | $4,626 | 19.6× |
| 2010 | $43.00 | $10,465 | $6,071 | 10.5× |
| 2012 | $33.00 | $13,636 | $5,312 | 13.6× |
| 2015 | $119 | $3,782 | $3,301 | 3.8× |
| 2018 | $150 | $3,000 | $2,519 | 3.0× |
| 2020 | $220 | $2,045 | $2,092 | 2.0× |
green = beat the S&P 500 · red = lost money
Best entry point in our set: 2005, turning $1,000 into $40,909. 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. Vertex is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
Play Sixty-40More in US Health
- What if you bought Pfizer?
- What if you bought Johnson & Johnson?
- What if you bought Merck?
- What if you bought Eli Lilly?
- What if you bought Amgen?
- What if you bought Gilead?