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Jeff Reeves
May 5, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT
By Jeff Reeves
ROCKVILLE, Md. (MarketWatch) "” With the killing of Osama bin Laden this week, there are many strong emotions being voiced in the media and countless references to the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. It's times like these when you stop and think about how truly different the world was 10 years ago, and how much our lives have changed.
Though the costs and evolution in the war on terror carry far more gravity than the ups and downs of the stock market, as a financial journalist I couldn't help but think back to some of the big changes we've seen on Wall Street across the last decade. Consider these facts from a pre-9/11 world:
Prior to 9/11, the rate on a one-year CD could net you nearly 4% annually.
Prior to 9/11, new home sales were brisk and on their way to numbering 900,000 units sold by the end of that year "” almost three times the record low of 321,000 homes that sold in all of 2010.
Prior to 9/11, Lehman Brothers was a well-respected investment bank with nearly $2 billion in net earnings, and made its home in Three World Financial Center just a stone's throw from the World Trade Center. Read whether Bin Laden's death will burst the commodity bubble on InvestorPlace.com.
But even acknowledging all these changes, for many individual investors the worst part of the last decade may in fact be a constant "” that is, a stock market that is relatively unmoved from where it was 10 years ago. The S&P 500 index is up a measly 8% in the last decade "” many of the biggest blue chips on Wall Street like Wal-Mart /quotes/comstock/13*!wmt/quotes/nls/wmt WMT -0.16% and Cisco /quotes/comstock/15*!csco/quotes/nls/csco CSCO +0.34% are essentially flat, and others like Microsoft /quotes/comstock/15*!msft/quotes/nls/msft MSFT +0.97% , General Electric /quotes/comstock/13*!ge/quotes/nls/ge GE -1.79% and Bank of America /quotes/comstock/13*!bac/quotes/nls/bac BAC -0.87% are painfully in the red.
But it was not a lost decade for all stocks. Here are nine picks that are up more than 900% since 9/11/01. (Prices are based on the market's close on May 3.)
Therese Poletti/MarketWatch Apple Stores have been around for 10 years.
Apple Inc. /quotes/comstock/15*!aapl/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL +0.39% was just starting to convince Wall Street that it was a worthy investment in 2001, thanks to its very first Apple Store locations and a little gadget known as the iPod. If you can believe it, adjusted for a 2005 stock split Apple shares were trading at around $9 in the days after 9/11. If you want even more mind-blowing numbers, consider that, for the fiscal year of 2001, Apple had $5.3 billion in revenues compared with forecasts of over $100 billion in revenue this year.
Forget about the Kindle. Amazon.com /quotes/comstock/15*!amzn/quotes/nls/amzn AMZN +0.77% was committed to the ink and paper book-selling game in 2001. Unfortunately, the business hadn't been brisk enough to offset the initial costs. As of 9/11, the company was pushing to finally turn it's first-ever quarterly profit "” $5 million, or a penny a share, on revenue just north of $1 billion. For 2011, Amazon is projected to rack up almost $50 billion in sales.
China was gaining momentum as an opportunity for American investors, and state-run oil major CNOOC Ltd. /quotes/comstock/13*!ceo/quotes/nls/ceo CEO -2.59% was one of the many picks that began trading on American stock exchanges as ADRs in the early 2000s. Thanks to aggressive exploration and steady growth in both upstream and downstream businesses, CNOOC stock grew aggressively as well. Its fiscal 2001 revenue tallied $2.5 billion. This year the company should comfortably top sales of $37 billion as crude-oil and gasoline prices continue to creep ever upward. Read about how oil inflation is crushing American families on InvestorPlace.com.
"Lloyds shares decline over 5% after the bank said loan losses in Ireland worsened http://on.mktw.net/mlTKs3" 2:24 a.m. EDT, May 5, 2011 from MarketWatch
"Hong Kong stocks open lower, with energy and property weak; Hang Seng Index down 0.2% http://on.mktw.net/jlXM96" 8:36 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2011 from MarketWatch
"Sad, but true: The quake in #Japan couldn't have come at a better time for U.S. car makers http://bit.ly/kuIcIZ" 5:00 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2011 from MarketWatch
"RT @MktwHulbert: Funny thing happened on way to bank http://on.mktw.net/mN7XUN" 3:56 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2011 from MarketWatch
"Apple will miss Steve Jobs's guts http://bit.ly/iPaNDB" 3:32 p.m. EDT, May 4, 2011 from MarketWatch
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