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What if you’d bought only Nvidia?
What if someone had put US$100 every month into one famous company? Compare it with the whole S&P 500, from the month that company’s shares could first be bought.
One stock against the S&P 500
The company
US dollars. Between 10 and 100,000.
You put in US$0. On 9 October 2026 it was worth about
A what-if with real past prices: fractions of a share allowed, dividends reinvested before tax, no broker fees, US dollars not adjusted for inflation.
The scary bit
Turn on JavaScript to see the biggest fall along the way.
The giants of 2000. What happened next?
The biggest US companies at the start of that year, when they looked like the safe, obvious picks. The same monthly amount in each, from January of that year.
| Company | Worth today | Against the S&P 500 |
|---|
Who was biggest: 2000, the ten largest holdings of Vanguard’s S&P 500 index fund on 31 December 1999 (its US regulatory filing). 2010, 2015 and 2020, company values on 31 December of the year before, where two published lists agree. We show only the companies those sources agree on, so some years list fewer than ten. Prices: Yahoo Finance adjusted closes, dividends reinvested before tax.
The catch: you already know who won
Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft look like obvious picks today because we know how the story ended. Back then, they were one name among thousands. Intel, Cisco and GE were once just as famous, and just as obvious.
Single companies also fall much further than the whole index. Switch between the names above and look at the scary bit each time. Would you have kept buying all the way down?
The index does not need you to guess. When a company in it grows, it takes up a bigger share of the index, so you get more of that growth without picking it.
How the sum works
Each month, we spend your amount on the company at that month’s closing price, and the same amount on the S&P 500. Dividends are reinvested before tax on both sides. Then we value everything at the latest price.
A company only joins from its first month of share prices. Google, for example, first sold shares to the public in August 2004, so nobody could buy it any earlier.
Prices: Yahoo Finance month-end adjusted closes, and the S&P 500 total return index, to 9 October 2026. Company names are examples of well-known shares, not a suggestion to buy or sell any of them. Past returns do not predict future results.
Want the winners without guessing?
See what buying the whole index every month would have done.