Visualize what investing $100 in early stocks would be worth today

Visualize what investing $100 in early stocks would be worth todayVisualize what investing $100 in early stocks would be worth todayTheres a lot of power in being first. And when it comes to Initial Public Offerings, or IPOs, it pays to be one of the earliest investors.But we wanted to understand how much it would pay, so we ran an experiment. Imagine you could go back in time and invest $100 into a handful of great companies when they first went public. What would your investments be worth today?Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moraOf all the companies we analyzed, Nike is the clear winner. An initial investment of $100 in 1980 would be worth over $6 million today.Walmart was a better bet than Amazon, topping the online retail giant by over $1 million in total investment growth.The same investment into Google (Alphabet) when it first went public would be worth only $2,632.Lets start with how we crunched the numbers. We wanted to compare apples to apples, so we made a couple key assumptions. First, we assumed our hypothetical investment of $100 at each IPO would stay with the underlying asset for the long term, but any dividends would be taken out as cash and leid reinvested. Then, we determined the present-day value of the investment through the ups and downs of stock splits, mergers and acquisitions. You can read more about our sources and methodologyhere. In short, you put $100 in at the IPO, and let it ride.The surprising conclusion of our visual is that tech stocks arent historically the best IPOs. Nike and Walmart fare much better than Apple and Google (Alphabet). Want another surprise? Buying $100 of Coca Cola would have been a much better investment than Starbucks. But regardless of how things turned out, the overall story in our visual is the enduring value of great American companies over several decades. Even GE, a company thats suffered its share of setbacks in the last several months, still looks like a great IPO pick after all these years. And although we arent excited about Googles return ($2,632) compared to other companies, thats still pretty good.So it pays to be among the earliest investors, but how do you knowwhat to invest in? All these companies initially started as one among many competitors. Some IPOs skyrocket in value only to plummet in the following years. Other IPOs take a long time to get off the ground. We dont know how to pick the winners, but were confident if you bought any of these stocks early on, youre still happy with your return today.Correction March 4th, 2019 A previous version of this article compared an Investment of $100 in BTC vs IPOs. In order to avoid confusion we are now only comparing investments into IPOs.This article originally appeared on How Much.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you sa y, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people