What if you bought Wirecard in 2005?
World · Germany. The hindsight answer, year by year, against the only benchmark that matters.
Could you have picked it? Play0× · S&P 500 same money: $5,763
Every dollar is gone. Wirecard collapsed in a €1.9bn fraud in 2020, so $1,000 invested in any of these years is worth exactly nothing today.
The story
Wirecard began in Munich around 1999 processing card payments for online gambling and adult websites, then reinvented itself as a fintech champion offering payment processing, card issuing and banking. Its growth looked spectacular, its shares soared, and in 2018 it replaced Commerzbank in the DAX, Germany's blue-chip index. For a German market starved of tech success stories, it was a national pride project.
There were warnings. Short sellers had questioned its accounts for years, and in 2019 the Financial Times published a series of reports alleging fake revenue in its Asian business. Germany's financial regulator BaFin responded by banning short selling in the stock and filing complaints against the journalists. In 2020 a special audit by KPMG could not verify key figures. In June 2020 the company admitted that €1.9 billion supposedly held in Philippine bank accounts probably did not exist. Wirecard filed for insolvency within days, its CEO was arrested, and its COO Jan Marsalek fled abroad and became an international fugitive. The shares became worthless.
The lesson: When regulators and executives attack critics rather than answer their questions, take the warning seriously; an unverifiable cash pile is a red flag.
$1,000 invested at the start of each year
| Bought in | Price then | Worth today | S&P 500 would be | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | $5.00 | $0 | $5,763 | — |
| 2007 | $10.00 | $0 | $4,789 | — |
| 2008 | $10.00 | $0 | $4,626 | — |
| 2010 | $10.00 | $0 | $6,071 | — |
| 2012 | $15.00 | $0 | $5,312 | — |
| 2015 | $40.00 | $0 | $3,301 | — |
| 2018 | $95.00 | $0 | $2,519 | — |
| 2020 | $110 | $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 2005 would be $5,763 today.
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. Wirecard is one of 258 positions on the wheel — including the ones that went to zero.
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