
With their stellar historical returns, equities have proven to be the best investment in the long term. By this logic, buying and holding stocks for a long period is a relatively simple, but highly effective, strategy to create wealth. However, when investing for the long haul, investors should focus on diversifying their portfolios, and look for large companies - primarily industry leaders - with growing earnings bases and substantial competitive advantages.
From this perspective, Apple, Nvidia, and Costco are all built to last, and are three great buy-and-hold stocks for the long term. Shares of these companies have consistently outperformed the S&P 500 Index ($SPX) for the past several years. Let’s examine the factors to understand why these are great “buy-and-hold forever” stocks.