Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) shareholders are having a huge year. Trading around $486 as of this writing, the shares are up about 127% in 2026, on top of a 77% gain in 2025.
The company has kept up, too. AMD’s third-quarter revenue grew to a record $13.4 billion, a 45% rise from the year-ago quarter, as data center sales almost doubled.
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But a year like this isn’t new to AMD. Going by year-end closing prices since 1981, the shares at least doubled in eight other calendar years. And the year after split evenly with four gains and four losses.
What does that record tell someone thinking about buying the shares now?
Image source: AMD.
Four up, four down
AMD’s eight earlier double years are in the table, each beside the stock’s price change in the following year. AMD has never paid a cash dividend, so every price change is the total return.
Data source: Yahoo Finance. Calculations by author.
Put simply, investors learned nearly nothing about the next year’s direction from a double. AMD rose in 21 of the 45 full calendar years from 1981 through 2025, or around 47% of the time. After a double, it rose in four of eight. Either way, the odds were near a coin flip.
And 2020 almost made the list itself. The shares climbed just under 100% that year, then added another 57% in 2021.
The average follow-up year was far better than the split suggests, with a gain of around 33%. But that average leans on two years, 1983 and 2020, with gains of about 168% and 100%. The other six follow-up years averaged a small loss.
The losing years were mild
I think the more useful pattern is in the size of the losses. All four of AMD’s down years after a double were fairly modest, ranging from a 9% decline in 2017 to an 18% drop in 2024.
A bad year for this growth stock normally looks far worse. AMD fell in 24 of its 45 full calendar years, and its typical decline in those years was around 31%. In 14 of the 24, it lost over 20%, including a 71% drop in 2008 and a 55% slide in 2022.
So, an investor who owned AMD heading into any of the double years kept most of the gain through the next year. The worst case was 2023 to 2024, when a 128% gain was followed by an 18% drop. Someone who held through both years still had around 86% more money than at the start.
