Ten Bagger

Peter Lynch who was very successful running Fidelity's Magellan fund from 1977 to 1990 popularized the term "ten bagger" (also 10-bagger or tenbagger) for a stock investment whose price goes up tenfold from your purchase price.  Earlier this year one of my stocks hit that milestone.  This was a first for me among stocks I had personally purchased (rather than inherited).  The company was Caterpillar (CAT), not perhaps the type of company people would expect to be a ten bagger investment.

I purchased CAT on August 21, 2013 at $83.4499 per share.  As with most of my stock picks I can't claim a lot of thought went into the selection.  I discussed the pick a little here and here.  The stock didn't do much at first dipping below 60 in January, 2016.  The CAT began a slow irregular rise.  But as late as April 2025 it traded below 300.

But then the AI data center building frenzy arrived.  This helped CAT in two ways.  They make the construction equipment needed to construct data centers and the electrical generators needed to power them.  It made for a good story and CAT stock took off.  It closed at 835.24 on April 23, 2026 putting the stock in ten bagger territory.  After falling back for a few days it continued up closing at 1073.46 on June 30, 2026.  This might have been a good day to sell as the next day it closed at 991.41 and has continued to fall from there.  It closed at 782.71 on July 29, 2026, out of ten bagger territory.  It came back a bit on a strong earnings report but has fallen again the last couple of days closing Friday, August 9, 2026 at 842.19.  So I decided I should post this while I could still claim ten bagger status.

The stock is still very richly priced.  While the data center boom will help CAT for the next few years it is questionable that it will cause the kind of large durable increase in CAT's earning power required to justify the current stock price.  According to wikipedia in 2013 CAT had revenue of  $55.66 billion, in 2025 it had revenue of  $67.59 billion. Revenue projections for 2026 are near $80 billion.  It should be noted CAT has bought back about 28% of their shares since 2013.  Still this doesn't seem like the sort of revenue increase would justify a stock price that is ten times higher than it was in 2013. 

Perhaps I should sell my shares but this would incur a large capital gains tax.  So I probably won't.