A lot can happen in 40 years. Just ask early investors of Micron Technology (MU 4.87%).
Micron went public in 1984 (42 years ago) as a tiny memory tech company based in Boise, Idaho. Back then, if you wanted to invest $1,000 in Micron stock, you would have called your broker directly over the phone and placed an order. There was no clicking; there was no real-time confirmation.
NASDAQ: MU
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If you had placed that order over the phone and let your shares grow over that time frame, here's what would have happened.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Micron stock rose over fivefold, driven by the expansion of personal computers and the success of its early DRAM chips. Your original $1,000 would have turned into about $5,700.
The late 1990s delivered another surge in value. Demand for memory tech was exploding alongside the Internet boom, and Micro was growing into one of the world's largest memory producers. By the peak of the dot-com era in March 2000, your original $1,000 investment would have been worth over $50,000.
Then, of course, came the crash.
Image source: Micron Technology.
The dot-com bust absolutely crushed Micron stock. And while the company continued to innovate throughout the 2000s and 2010s, the stock failed to reclaim its dot-com-era highs for about two decades.
All in all, if you had stayed invested from 1984 through the dot-com crash and rocky years leading up to today's AI boom, your original $1,000 investment would be worth about $414,500 today (January 27, 2026).
Put differently: Every $1 invested in Micron in 1984 has turned into roughly $414 today.
Micron continues to rally in 2026, yet its valuation doesn't look stretched. It's currently trading at about 12 times forward earnings, which is lower than the average for the tech sector (about 25). Given the importance of memory in today's tech, there's a good chance this stock has plenty of upside ahead.
