What you could've made on a past investment (stock market, purchase, work)

[southkakkatlantan]

I thought this was fun/interesting to play around with, so just sharing:

https://finmasters.com/stock-calculator/

[CharlieAllnut]

This is way cool!

[ohio_peasant]

It only goes back to January 2021. So it isn't really about "past investment". More like "recent gambling".

Would have been more interesting, had it gone way back to 1792, when the New York Stock Exchange was founded!

[southkakkatlantan]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

It only goes back to January 2021. So it isn't really about "past investment". More like "recent gambling".

Would have been more interesting, had it gone way back to 1792, when the New York Stock Exchange was founded!

Where are you getting that it only goes back to Jan 2021?

[CharlieAllnut]

Originally Posted by ohio_peasant

It only goes back to January 2021. So it isn't really about "past investment". More like "recent gambling".

Would have been more interesting, had it gone way back to 1792, when the New York Stock Exchange was founded!

It goes back to January 2003

[southkakkatlantan]

Originally Posted by CharlieAllnut

It goes back to January 2003

I thought it went back to the start year of the specific stock..

[Florida2014]

Yeah, I punched in MSFT and I could go as far back as 1986.

Not sure I want to play this game, lol. It's too depressing.

[ohio_peasant]

I stand corrected. The earliest-date does depend on specific stocks. In some cases it reaches all of the way back to 1970, but notice that the returns don't update. The earliest date that does register an update, is November 1999. Which is good news, because ever since I joined this site (February 2013), I've been carping on January 2000 as the official date from which stock market historical reckoning ought to begin.

[Southern man]

It didn’t work for Home Depot which I purchased 200 shs around 1983 and kept it about 5 months. On the other hand, I don’t want to know.

[hikernut]

Looking at the thread title, I expected this was going to be "fish that got away" stories. In other words, stocks that you owned at one time but (regrettably) sold.

The biggest "fish" I can think of that I threw back was TJX. I bought it in early 2000 at less than $2/sh (split adjusted), but did not hold it for long. It trades around $72 today

There was also Sun Microsystems (symbol was SUNW). I believe it was the first individual stock purchase I ever made, in the late 1980s. I sold it after a few months for, as I recall, for a gain of around 20%. Of course it went way, way higher. The whole company was eventually purchased by Oracle. I've never bothered to figure out what the gain would have been to date, but I expect it would be pretty depressing to see the multiplier.