A little history - Tom Monaghan and his brother, James, purchase "DomiNick's," a pizza store in Ypsilanti, Mich in 1965. They borrowed $900 to buy the store from the previous owner. A year later, James traded his half of the business to Tom for a Volkswagen Beetle. In 1965 Tom renamed the business "Domino's Pizza, Inc". Ten years after that, Amstar Corp., maker of Domino Sugar, instituted a trademark infringement lawsuit against Domino's Pizza. It took another 5 years before the courts finally ruled the pizza maker did not infringe upon the sugar maker’s trademark. The rest, as they say, is history.
What does this have to with investing you might ask. Come on, admit it you’ve seen the those ridiculous headlines about how much money you would have if you would have only put $10k into Google when they went public back in July of 2004. The answer to that question today is something north of $20M (assuming you just bought and held). A nice, tidy some most of us might be able to squeak by on 😊. Well, it just so happens Dominos went public one month earlier than Google did in 2004 and as you can see in the chart below, which the better investment has (so far) turned out to be (blue=Dominos, red=Google)
Dominos would have turned that $10k into $40M+. Outpacing Google’s return by almost 100%, Dominos has been the better investment. Sometimes the best investments come from places you least expect.